SF Chronicle Launches Kamala Harris AI Bot Ahead of 2024 Election

[BumRushDaShow]

Source: MEDIAite

Oct 12th, 2024, 11:14 am


Where does Vice President Kamala Harris like to purchase her burritos? Was she tough on crime as a prosecutor? And among a given trio of Republicans, with whom would she rather be stuck in an elevator? These questions, both serious and not-so, can be answered by the San Francisco Chronicle’s AI-powered “Kamala Harris News Assistant.”

The tool compiles 29 years of Chronicle reporting via an AI-powered chat interface to address readers’ queries about the presidential candidate. All responses are concise, easy-to-read, and include links to the original articles from which the information is pulled.

“We have the best-in-class, local journalism in our markets, so how can we make it more discoverable?” Tim O’Rourke, VP of Content Strategy at Hearst Newspapers, which owns the SF paper, told Mediaite’s Aidan McLaughlin on Hearst’s decision to harness AI in its newsrooms. “How can we allow readers to find [the information] on their terms?”

For O’Rourke and his team, AI is the answer. “When we really have a unique content corpus that we can leverage, we want to make sure that information is available to our readers,” he said. The Chronicle has had no shortage of reporting on Harris over the past three decades. The vice president and current presidential candidate was born in the Bay Area and her career took off there.

Read more: https://www.mediaite.com/politics/sf-chronicle-launches-kamala-harris-ai-bot-ahead-of-2024-election/

[highplainsdem]

1. Not the best idea. Chatbots often get things wrong, and I didn't see any warnings about that on

their page for asking questions.

The response to the question I'd asked also linked to articles that do require a digital subscription, so this chatbot is at least partly about marketing.