A decision by popular Australian science magazine Cosmos to publish articles generated by artificial intelligence (AI) has drawn criticism from its own contributors and former editors, including two co-founders.
The CSIRO, which publishes Cosmos, says it backs the “experimental project”, which is designed to investigate the “opportunities and risks of using AI”, and scheduled to run until February 2025.
But critics say the AI service undermines journalism and was built without proper consent.
The project was the result of a 2023 grant from the Meta Australian News Fund, administered by the Walkley Foundation which supports excellence in journalism.
The controversy is an example of growing anxieties around the role of AI in journalism as publishers experiment with new productivity tools. Hundreds of journalists employed by Nine Entertainment went on strike last week, partly over AI protections.
Cosmos ran into financial difficulties and lost half its staff earlier this year, having won dozens of journalism and industry awards over 20 years of publishing. National science agency CSIRO took over the publication in June.
The grant supporting AI-generated explainers pre-dates that takeover.
During two weeks last month, Cosmos published six AI-generated explainer articles on its website on topics ranging from black holes to carbon sinks.
Each article stated, “This article was generated by our custom AI service.”
“Our service was built to focus on our archive of more than 15,000 factually correct science news stories and features. It also uses Open AI to help create the content. All generated content is fact checked by a trained science communicator and edited by our publishing team.”
Cosmos contributors reacted to the move with disbelief, saying their work had been used to develop an AI service that generated articles and, in their opinion, undermined their role as journalists.
Many were angry they had not been consulted and said their calls to the publisher had gone unanswered.
“I’ve contacted CSIRO and the Cosmos editors twice in the last week and had no response,” Bianca Nogrady, a freelance science journalist and Cosmos contributor, said.
Editorial staff at Cosmos were also not told about the proposed custom AI service, two former editors said.
According to Ian Connellan and Gail MacCallum, Cosmos’s former publisher, the Royal Institution of Australia (RiAus), did not tell them it was applying for funding for a custom AI service in late 2023, even though they were in charge of Cosmos’s editorial decisions.
“We had no knowledge of the proposal to employ AI as a background writer creator,” Mr Connellan, who was the RiAus editor-in-chief until February, said.
“As editor-in-chief, I would have said this is a bad idea.”
Ms MacCallum, Cosmos’s managing editor at the time, said there were questions to answer about the ethics of using AI in such a way.
“I’m a huge proponent of exploring AI, but having it create articles of fact is a little past my comfort zone.”
Kylie Ahern, who co-founded Cosmos in 2004 and served as chief executive until 2013, said AI-generated articles were “not the right direction” for her former employer.
Wilson da Silva, another co-founder who edited Cosmos from 2004 to 2013, said it was “definitely not what [he] would’ve done.”
Cosmos’s acting editor, Gavin Stone, referred questions from the ABC to CSIRO Publishing.
In a statement, a CSIRO Publishing spokesperson dismissed concerns that Cosmos’s AI service was trained on contributors’ articles.
“This experiment does not involve training OpenAI’s GPT-4 model (which was pre‑trained by OpenAI),” the spokesperson said.
The service works by using OpenAI’s GPT-4 to generate text on various topics. It then automatically fact-checks this against the publisher’s large, well-researched database of 15,000 stories and feature articles using a process called retrieval-augmented generation (RAG).
GPT-4 was trained on vast datasets including CommonCrawl, a repository of content scraped from billions of web pages, including those of Cosmos Magazine. The legality of this approach is still being decided, and The New York Times and several authors are currently suing OpenAI for using scraped copyrighted work to train its AI.
The RAG method means Cosmos’s AI service wasn’t specifically trained on Cosmos articles, although it ultimately relies on this body of work to fact-check its output.
The CSIRO Publishing spokesperson said the project was an experiment to assess the “possible usefulness (and risks)” of using a model like GPT-4 “to assist our science communication professionals to produce draft science explainer articles”.
The experiment was under “continual review”, they added.
“This ongoing review could involve testing changes in how we program the tool, how we choose to use the tool, and whether any further usage or development of the tool is to continue after the end of the project.”
Cosmos has not published an AI-generated article since the end of July.
Despite the relatively recent public use of the technology, Cosmos’s experiment with AI-generated explainers was underway well before CSIRO Publishing took over in June.
In late 2023, RiAus, which published Cosmos from September 2018 to June 2024, applied for a digital innovation grant through the Meta Australia News Fund managed by the Walkley Foundation.
Meta (formerly Facebook) set up the $15 million three-year fund to support Australian journalism in 2021, following its public spat with the Morrison government over the News Media Bargaining Code.
Will Berryman, executive director of RiAus, said he applied for a grant to develop an AI tool to help journalists with background research, “as an aid to journalism and not a tool that generates articles directly”.
“When we thought about doing this we didn’t see it being a tool that would generate articles,” he said.
“These were tools that were put together to help them do what they do.”
RiAus was awarded the grant in February 2024. Mr Berryman left Cosmos when CSIRO Publishing took over the publication in June.
But Walkley Foundation CEO Shona Martyn said “the nature of the project was fully explained in the entry”, which was lodged by the September 2023 application deadline.
“Cosmos Magazine received a grant … for a project that utilised AI and machine learning to assist in the repurposing of some of their existing science stories into text, video and audio explainers with the aim of driving audience engagement and knowledge,” Ms Martyn said.
Mr Berryman said AI tools like Cosmos’s were needed to push back against misinformation, which was being increasingly AI-generated, and to help publishers produce content at a lower cost, given the decline of advertising revenue that used to keep magazines operating.
“The business model is broken for things like Cosmos,” he said.
“We needed to do something differently.”
He said contributors did not need to be consulted about the tool as it was simply a more “efficient and effective” version of Google’s search function.
“They’re not independent writers. They work for the [publisher],” he said.
Others say Cosmos’s use of its archive raises tricky ethical and legal questions.
Much of Cosmos’s archive of 15,000 articles was written by freelancers that retain copyright over their work, ex-editors Mr Connellan and Ms MacCallum said.
“The creator of the work retains copyright but grants a perpetual license to Cosmos to use that work both at the time it’s commissioned and in perpetuity,” Mr Connellan said.
Creators also have “moral rights” which protect the relationship between a creator and their work even if the creator no longer owns the work or copyright.
CSIRO Publishing’s charter promises to treat authors honestly and reward creativity.
Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA) research and strategy policy lead Lilia Anderson said AI can be a valuable resource to newsrooms and journalists “where it is used ethically”.
“What that means for us is that staff are consulted on any use of AI in the workplace, that they consent to that use, and that AI is being used in a way that doesn’t replace journalist jobs, but enhances or supports their role.”
She said AI-generated articles could be ethical so long as journalists retained editorial control.
Along with consent, the MEAA is calling for journalists to be compensated for the use of their work to train AI.
“We want the benefits to be shared in some way,” she said.
Monica Attard, co-director of the Centre for Media Transition at the University of Technology Sydney, said the ethics of Cosmos’s use of AI partly depended on the publisher’s intention, which was difficult to infer.
“It’s about whether they’re using it to employ fewer journalists or to facilitate or improve the end product.”
Michael Davis, also at the Centre for Media Transition, agreed.
“If it’s just churning out short factual articles and that helps support the magazine so they can employ journalists to do the big feature stories … there’s a reasonable argument for it.”
But Science Journalist Association of Australia (SJAA) president Jackson Ryan dismissed the efficiency argument for AI-generated articles as “weasel words”.
“At end of day, it’s a cost-cutting measure and a way to save money for an outlet that’s on its last legs because it just got sold,” he said.
“The easiest way to cut back on costs is always staffing.”
The Walkley Foundation also drew criticism for administering the AI-generated articles grant.
Kylie Ahern, who now runs a science communications agency, said it was a strange decision given the broader questions around the use of AI in journalism and concerns workers are being undercut by generative AI trained on their work.
“I cannot believe that’s what the Walkleys would fund,” she said.
Freelance journalist Bianca Nogrady added that she was “incredibly disappointed” the Walkley Foundation appeared to have backed the project.
“An organisation that’s entrusted with supporting journalism in Australia has funded a project that actively undermines journalism in Australia.”
Walkley Foundation CEO Shona Martyn said the Royal Institution of Australia’s entry was “considered by a judging panel of experienced journalists”.
“More generally, the Walkley Foundation recognises that AI may be used in journalism projects, but entrants to its awards, scholarships and fellowships must fully declare how AI has been used in any work submitted or in the creation of any entry submissions.”
In a subsequent statement on Thursday afternoon, the Walkley Foundation said although it was the administrator of the Meta Australian News Fund, it was “not the awarder of the grant” and had played “no part in its funding or judging”. But a spokesperson confirmed the Walkley Foundation had appointed the panel of six that chose the successful applications.
“The nature of the project was fully explained in the entry and the bulk of the application was for funding for freelance writers, content editors, video producers, fact-checkers, a podcaster, and other related professionals,” the spokesperson said.
“The Walkley Foundation is in ongoing conversation with the CSIRO, and as is its practice, will be monitoring compliance of this grant until its conclusion in February 2025.
“Under the terms of the Meta Australian News Fund, grant recipients are obliged to repay funding if a project does not complete or breaches its contractual agreement.
Ms Martyn said, “The Walkley Foundation expects all recipients of grants to honour and pay copyright holders as required, and fulfil all legal responsibilities.
“The CSIRO has assured the Walkley Foundation that this will be the case.”
Aside from these legal and ethical questions, Cosmos’s AI-generated articles were boring, long-serving former Cosmos editor Wilson da Silva said.
“Science writing is not regurgitating facts in an accessible way.
“How much inspiration will you get from an AI? The human journey of discovery is what makes science so compelling.”
The co-founder, who edited the publication during a period where it was twice named magazine of the year, said Cosmos has “diverted from its traditional task”.
“We set ourselves the task of trying to make it the New Yorker of science. It’s changed.”
Ms Ahern said: “The only way to build audience is through great journalism. You don’t build a brand on AI.
“If Cosmos doesn’t value science journalism, who will?”
