In November, venerable tech outlet CNET began publishing articles generated by artificial intelligence, on topics such as personal finance, that proved to be riddled with errors. Today the human members of its editorial staff have unionized, calling on their bosses to provide better conditions for workers and more transparency and accountability around the use of AI. "In this time of instability, our diverse content teams need industry-standard job protections, fair compensation, editorial independence, and a voice in the decisionmaking process, especially as automated technology threatens our jobs and reputations," reads the mission statement of the CNET Media Workers Union, whose more than 100 members include writers, editors, video producers, and other content creators. While the organizing effort started before CNET management began its AI rollout, its employees could become one of the first unions to force its bosses to set guardrails around the use of content produced by generative AI services like ChatGPT. Any agreement struck with CNET's parent company, Red Ventures, could help set a precedent for how companies approach the technology. Multiple digital media outlets have recently slashed staff, with some like BuzzFeed and Sports Illustrated at the same time embracing AI-generated content.

CNET, the venerable tech site which began publication nearly 30 years ago, has become the latest digital media company whose staff have chosen to band together and demand more. The CNET Media Worker's Union (CMWU) today sent a letter to Red Ventures, the private equity concern which purchased CNET in 2020, seeking recognition of a bargaining unit of nearly 100 workers including editors, writers, and video producers. According to CMWU, a supermajority of those in the unit signed union authorization cards. Like the overwhelming majority of other organized digital publications, the workers who make up CMWU are responding in large part to an increasingly hostile financial climate in the industry. CNET has not been spared the same tumult that has led to the shuttering of Buzzfeed News and VICE's decision to file for bankruptcy: the company went through three brutal rounds of layoffs over recent months, the most recent of which stripped approximately a dozen staffers from the masthead.

On Thursday, CNET began making layoffs to its editorial staff, just weeks after the company was exposed for using AI to produce articles without notifying readers. Some of the staff cuts include several longtime employees, according to The Verge. The layoffs total around a dozen people, a CNET staffer says, or about 10 percent of the editorial staff. In January, Futurism reported that CNET had published dozens of articles since last November that were generated using AI tools. The AI articles were full of errors and plagiarism, and readers were not informed of how they were written.

If there is one thing the boosters and cynics agree on about artificial intelligence, it's that the tech is coming for white-collar jobs. This is not speculation of a far-off future--it's happening now. It makes sense, from a cold business perspective, that text-based media would want to adopt A.I. in order to cut costs (humans, expensive) and speed up output (humans, slow). Just look at how BuzzFeed's rock-bottom stock value jumped when it said last month that the site would use services from buzzy startup OpenAI to spiff up the site's famed quizzes. As Damon Beres wrote in the Atlantic shortly after the announcement: "The bleak future of media is human-owned websites profiting from automated banner ads placed on bot-written content, crawled by search-engine bots, and occasionally served to bot visitors."

CNET will stop publishing articles written entirely by robots after receiving a copious amount of negative attention over the practice during the last few weeks. The affirmation was made on a conference call with editorial employees and executives at CNET's parent company, marketing firm Red Ventures, on Friday, about two weeks after the website Futurist exposed several AI-written articles on financial topics that contained severe, glaring errors. On Friday, CNET's editor-in-chief Connie Guglielmo said the publication's use of robots wasn't done "in secret," but was instead done "quietly," and affirmed CNET disclosed their use of artificial intelligence to readers on the affected articles. But that disclosure wasn't initially visible to readers unless they clicked on an article's byline. In most cases, the byline read "CNET Money Staff," and there was no visible affirmation that the story being read was written by a robot.

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