HAPPENING TODAY: Business Insider Rally

NEW YORK – Unionized journalists at Business Insider will hold a rally at 1PM ET Thursday outside company headquarters at One Liberty Plaza to protest management’s planned roll-out of AI-generated news stories. 

Earlier this year, Business Insider President Barbara Peng announced mass layoffs of 26% of union-represented jobs and vowed that the company would be “fully embracing” and “going all-in on” AI. She’s keeping her promise – BI is aiming to publish 60 “stories” produced by artificial intelligence and edited by non-union managers this month. 

“When we went on strike more than two years ago to win our first contract, many of us held signs that said ‘Don’t replace me with ChatGPT,’” said Alex Nicoll, senior reporter at Business Insider and a steward for Insider Union. “And yet, it now appears that Business Insider management and their parent company, German publishing house Axel Springer, wants to do exactly that: replace our unit’s work with AI-generated slop. At our rally, we will tell management what we think of slop journalism and stand firmly with one another behind the idea that our readers deserve better. They deserve work by us, human journalists.” 

Rally speakers will include Insider Union members, as well as supporters from across the NewsGuild of New York and NYC labor, as well as New York State Senator Kristen Gonzalez, sponsor of the “New York Artificial Intelligence Transparency for Journalism Act”. 

The rally will come just days after PEN Guild, which represents journalists at Axel-Springer owned-POLITICO and E&E News, won a landmark arbitration case over AI.  The arbitrator found POLITICO violated the collective bargaining agreement when it launched two AI-driven products without providing required notice, bargaining, or human oversight, as required by the contract.

The Insider Union is also prepared to file a grievance over the planned AI stories, which, if published, will represent a gross violation of their collective bargaining agreement.

“Management’s goal is profit, not excellence, and their willingness to publish AI-generated slop, instead of people-powered journalism, is a clear example of exactly that,” said Susan DeCarava, president of the NewsGuild of New York. “BI readers deserve news they can trust and that comes from our members.”