Data
what data you have and how you use it
AI runs on data, and newsrooms hold a lot of it: archives, audience records, source material, and more. This card looks at what data you have, where it comes from, and how it is used with AI tools. A team pauses here to consider what it is feeding in and what that means.
Questions to explore
- What data does your newsroom hold, and which of it ends up in AI tools?
- Where does the data you use come from, and do you have the right to use it this way?
- What happens to the information you type into an AI tool after you send it?
- How do you decide what data should never go into an outside system?
- Which of your data could be valuable, sensitive, or risky if it were exposed?
Expert voices
“Garbage in, garbage out. AI amplifies biased or politically manipulated official statistics unless journalists actively correct for them.”
“Big tech is trying to harvest as much data as possible, and newsroom data is a valuable resource. Be conscious about protecting it and broker those deals before you are exploited.”
“Ask whether you have the fuel for AI before building anything. Audit your sources: are documents PDFs or text, is data in spreadsheets or buried in reports? Messy data will fail, and the AI will get the blame.”
Things to consider
- Data put into an outside tool may be stored or used beyond your view.
- The source and rights of your data shape what you can legally and ethically do with it.
- Not all data is equal: some carries far more risk than the rest.
Pull Data when it is relevant and set it aside when it is not. Pair it with the other AI Conversations cards, lay them out on a table, and use the questions above to get everyone on the same page. Capture what you discuss on sticky notes or in a shared doc.
More AI Conversations cards
