Policies & Procedures

Our Commitment

The Convergence Lens is committed to transparency, accuracy, and ethical journalism in today’s era of rapidly evolving artificial intelligence technology. Our highest duty is to our readers and to truth-telling. This policy details how we will approach AI, both as a subject for reporting and as a potential tool in our journalistic process.

As a worker-owned cooperative, the journalists and editors who co-own The Convergence Lens are the same people responsible for upholding this policy. It is a set of standards our Worker-Members hold ourselves to collectively.

We recognize that AI technology presents opportunity, yes, but it also presents serious concerns. This policy dictates our approach to navigating this landscape while maintaining the integrity of our work and our mission. All of our Worker-Members, staff, contractors, and guest writers are expected to adhere to this policy when writing articles or otherwise working for The Convergence Lens.

Core Principles

1. Environmental Responsibility

We take the environmental impact of generative AI seriously. Training large language models and generating AI content requires massive computational resources, contributing significantly to carbon emissions and environmental degradation.

Our commitment:

• We prioritize minimizing AI use wherever human expertise or automation suffices.
• We factor this environmental cost into all decisions about AI tool adoption.
• We will not use AI tools simply because they exist – any use must serve a clear, necessary purpose.
• We advocate for transparency about AI’s environmental costs in our coverage of the technology.

2. AI Company Standards

We refuse to support companies whose business practices, leadership, or ethical standards contradict our values. The AI industry is rife with labor exploitation, data theft, copyright violations, and corporate malfeasance.

Prohibited tools and companies include:

• OpenAI/ChatGPT: Due to ethical concerns about Sam Altman’s leadership, the company’s
approach to content licensing, labor practices, and its pattern of prioritizing profit over safety.
• Any tools trained on scraped content without creator consent.
• Companies with documented patterns of worker exploitation.
• Tools that do not provide transparency about training data sources.

We will only consider AI tools from companies that:

• Obtain proper licensing and consent for training data.
• Provide transparency about their training datasets.
• Demonstrate fair compensation practices for workers.
• Have clear ethical guidelines and accountability structures.
• Respect intellectual property rights.
• Respect data privacy.
• Show commitment to environmental sustainability.

3. Understanding Different Types of AI

We do understand that not all AI is created equal, and different types serve different functions with varying ethical implications:

Examples of Acceptable AI Applications:

• Transcription tools that convert audio to text.
• Translation services that make content accessible across languages.
• Accessibility tools that help make content available to people with disabilities.
• Organizational tools that help sort, categorize, or search through large datasets.
• Analytical tools that help identify patterns in data.

Examples of Prohibited/Non-Ethical AI Applications:

• Generative AI for text creation – prohibited except in specific circumstances outlined below.
• AI image generation for journalistic content – prohibited.
• AI voice cloning or synthesis – prohibited
• AI video generation – prohibited.

Specific Use Cases

What Worker-Members Will NOT Use AI For:

Writing articles, analysis, or commentary

• All Convergence Lens content is written and edited by human journalists and editors.
• AI-generated text undermines our voice, authenticity, and expertise.
• Current AI tools produce unreliable information and lack critical thinking.

Creating images that purport to represent reality

• We will never use AI-generated images in place of photography or illustration.
• Visual journalism requires human perspective, ethics, and accountability.
• If we use AI images as the subject of our articles (for example, if the story is about the dangers of AI misinformation and we show examples), we will clearly disclose which images are fake.

Generating social media content

• Our social media presence will remain human-led.
• Authentic voices are integral to our brand identity.
• We may employ automation tools to quickly disseminate our articles or other announcements,
but no generative AI will be used in those automations.

Conducting interviews or primary research

• Journalism requires human connection, judgment, and ethical decision-making – it always will.

Fact-checking or verification

• AI tools are prone to hallucination and cannot replace human verification.

Editorial decisions

• What we cover, how we frame stories, and what we publish are human decisions.

What We May Use AI For (With Restrictions):

Transcription and Translation

Permitted: Using transcription tools to create initial drafts of interview transcripts.

• All transcripts must be reviewed and corrected by a human editor.
• When using AI transcription for published interview content, we note this in our methodology.
• AI-assisted translation is permitted for accessibility, with human review required.

Research Assistance

Permitted: Using AI tools to help organize or search through large datasets or documents.

• All findings must be independently verified through primary sources.
• Relying on AI summaries without reading original materials is not permitted.

Accessibility Enhancement

Permitted: Using AI to generate alt text for images, transcripts for video content, or other accessibility features.

• All AI-generated accessibility content must be reviewed and edited by humans.

Behind-the-Scenes Administrative Tasks

Permitted: Using AI for internal administrative tasks when automation does not suffice.

Not permitted: Any use that handles confidential source information or sensitive editorial communications.

Experimentation and Future Consideration

We are open to emerging AI applications while remaining heavily cautious. Any new AI tool under consideration must:

1. Undergo ethical review by editorial leadership.
2. Meet all company standards dictated in this policy.
3. Serve a clear purpose that improves our journalism without compromising quality.
4. Include transparency protocols for reader disclosure.
5. Be documented in our internal log.

Transparency and Disclosure

Reader Transparency

When we use AI tools in any capacity that touches published content:

1. We disclose the specific tool used (e.g., “Interview transcribed using Otter.ai with human review and correction”).
2. We explain what the tool did and what role humans played.
3. We include this information in a methodology note or author’s note.
4. We never hide AI assistance even when minimal.

Internal Documentation

We maintain an internal log of all AI (and non-AI) tool usage including:

• Tool name and company
• Purpose of use
• Date and context
• Content or project affected
• Editorial approval obtained
• Outcome and any issues encountered

This log helps us evaluate tool effectiveness, identify patterns, and maintain accountability.

Protection of Intellectual Property

Our journalism is valuable intellectual property created through human labor, expertise, and investment.

We assert:

• Our content may not be used to train AI models without explicit permission and fair compensation.
• We oppose the scraping of our work for AI training purposes.
• We will pursue available legal remedies against unauthorized use of our work.
• Any AI tools we may use do not constitute permission to use our content for training.

Labor and Professional Standards

We also recognize that AI technology poses a severe threat to journalists, writers, artists, and other creative professionals and their fields of work.

Our commitment:

• We will not use AI to reduce or replace hours to avoid compensating our Worker-Members.
• We support fair compensation for all creative work, including work used in AI training.
• We advocate for strong protections for creative professionals in the AI age.
• Our coverage of AI will center the perspectives of workers affected by this technology.

Review and Updates

We further commit to:

• Annual policy reviews at minimum.
• Immediate updates when new concerns arise.
• Soliciting feedback from our community and editorial team.
• Transparency about changes and the reasoning behind them.
• Publishing update notes with each policy revision.

Accountability

Responsibility for this policy is shared across the cooperative:

• Worker-Member Body: Collective oversight and authority on AI use decisions, exercised through cooperative governance.
• Editorial Team: Day-to-day implementation and compliance.
• Board of Directors: Final authority on policy disputes or requests for exceptions.
• Community: Holding us accountable through feedback, questions, and Reader-Member governance participation.

Readers can:
• Report concerns about potential undisclosed AI use.
• Request information about our AI practices.
• Provide feedback on this policy through Reader-Member governance channels.

Why This Matters To Us

At The Convergence Lens, we believe that journalism cannot be automated.

The cultural analysis, political commentary, and investigative work we produce requires lived experience, real expertise, critical thinking, and human perspective. AI cannot replicate this, nor should we want it to. As a worker cooperative, we also have a structural commitment to this belief: the people who produce TCL’s journalism are its co-owners. Their labor, expertise, and human judgment are not overhead to be minimized; they are this cooperative’s core asset and its reason for existing. We will not adopt tools that diminish the value of the work our Worker-Members do.

Additionally, we believe that trust is earned through transparency. Our readers trust us because we are honest about our methods, our limitations, and our values. This includes being transparent about if and how we use AI tools.

Ethics must guide our use of technology. Just because a tool exists does not mean we should use it. Every technological choice is an ethical choice, and we choose to prioritize people over convenience.

Questions and Concerns

For questions about this policy, concerns about its implementation, or reports of potential violations:

Contact: [email protected]
Subject Line: “AI Policy Inquiry”

This policy reflects our current understanding and commitment as of late 2025. We acknowledge that the AI landscape changes rapidly, and we remain committed to adapting our approach as we learn more while staying true to our core values. No data we may access is ever permitted to be used in cloud-based AI, and that will not change. We understand that there are programs such as Ollama that can run models locally, privately, and with a lower environmental impact. There are language bots that also run locally that could assist with interviewing individuals who speak endangered or rare languages. These are the types of tools we will prioritize over ones like ChatGPT. We are always researching, reviewing, and discussing new possibilities for growth, but our commitment is first and foremost to sustainability and our code of ethics.