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Nearly every week, I see newspapers and magazines that seemed fine suddenly going out of business. Or a private equity fund buying up a chain of newspapers that had been serving communities for decades and stripping them for parts. And now, the thing that’s making all publishers wring their hands is AI – publishers are seeing massive drops to their web visits as AI scrapes their content and delivers it up to people in chatbots, with the journalists who did the original work not even credited with the work.

Despite this, I have hope for journalism because of what’s happening at The Tyee.

Years ago, we made a strategic bet that support from our readers was going to drive our whole future. And thankfully, that is working for us.

Over the past decade, we’ve more than doubled our journalism team and are publishing more work than ever. More people read The Tyee now than at any point in our 23-year history.

This is only possible because we regularly ask our readers to sign up as paying Tyee Builder members. Roughly half of our entire budget is made up of contributions from over 10,000 readers.

We’ve been doing more as our resources have grown. A weekend culture section filled with original essays. Hard-hitting investigative journalism in Alberta. A brand new biodiversity beat. A reporting project called Reality Check, focusing on misinformation and online radicalization. A flagship podcast.

Our model is simple: if more of our readers sign up to support The Tyee, we can keep up with rising costs and keep adding more talented journalists to our roster and set them loose on uncovering truths that would otherwise not see the light of day.

That’s why we’re launching a spring member drive to sign up 650 new or upgraded recurring Tyee Builder members (that’s monthly or annual) by midnight on Monday, June 15.

The Tyee is a Registered Journalism Organization, so contributions over $5 get tax receipts.

And back by popular demand! Until our campaign deadline of June 15, sign up to contribute $15 per month or $180 per year and get a piece of custom Tyee headgear.

— Jeanette Ageson, Publisher

Join The Tyee as a Builder today.

Human journalists still have a job to do -- if readers support them

Nearly every week, I see newspapers and magazines that seemed fine suddenly going out of business. Or a private equity fund buying up a chain of newspapers that had been serving communities for decades and stripping them for parts. And now, the thing that’s making all publishers wring their hands is AI – publishers are seeing massive drops to their web visits as AI scrapes their content and delivers it up to people in chatbots, with the journalists who did the original work not even credited with the work.

Despite this, I have hope for journalism because of what’s happening at The Tyee.

Years ago, we made a strategic bet that support from our readers was going to drive our whole future. And thankfully, that is working for us.

Over the past decade, we’ve more than doubled our journalism team and are publishing more work than ever. More people read The Tyee now than at any point in our 23-year history.

This is only possible because we regularly ask our readers to sign up as paying Tyee Builder members. Roughly half of our entire budget is made up of contributions from over 10,000 readers.

We’ve been doing more as our resources have grown. A weekend culture section filled with original essays. Hard-hitting investigative journalism in Alberta. A brand new biodiversity beat. A reporting project called Reality Check, focusing on misinformation and online radicalization. A flagship podcast.

Our model is simple: if more of our readers sign up to support The Tyee, we can keep up with rising costs and keep adding more talented journalists to our roster and set them loose on uncovering truths that would otherwise not see the light of day.

That’s why we’re launching a spring member drive to sign up 650 new or upgraded recurring Tyee Builder members (that’s monthly or annual) by midnight on Monday, June 15.

The Tyee is a Registered Journalism Organization, so contributions over $5 get tax receipts.

And back by popular demand! Until our campaign deadline of June 15, sign up to contribute $15 per month or $180 per year and get a piece of custom Tyee headgear.

— Jeanette Ageson, Publisher

Join The Tyee as a Builder today.
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The Tyee’s AI Policy

Our journalism is made by humans for humans. These are our principles.

(Last updated: May 2026)

The emergence of generative artificial intelligence products in recent years has unleashed new possibilities for creators and consumers of creative work.

This has prompted newsrooms all over the world to consider how and why they might use these tools. It also has opened up questions in the minds of audiences about whether they can be sure the work they are reading wasn’t created in whole or in part using generative AI.

The speed of development of AI tools is rapid enough that very specific policies about AI usage are quickly out of date. In light of that, this policy statement instead reflects the values and principles of The Tyee that will guide our decision-making.

These principles are as follows:

  • We do not publish journalism that is written or generated by AI. We do not use generative AI to create or augment news images.
  • We take ultimate accountability for everything that is published on our pages, including determining accuracy, sourcing and the verification of facts.
  • We use and prioritize human judgment, creativity, labour and verification in our work.
  • We recognize that readers value human inputs, and that readers value the human voice and style of The Tyee.
  • We do not rely on answers given by generative AI to establish facts or framing for our journalistic work.
  • We credit the work of others when we are building on it, referencing it, commenting on it or republishing it. We seek permission or rely on fair comment or Creative Commons standards.
  • We understand that the answers put forward by AI tools are inherently laden with inaccuracy and bias and the outcome of existing power structures; they must not be taken as objective facts or reality.
  • Given AI’s environmental impact, any use of AI tools will be done judiciously.
  • We do not put private information or copyrighted work into tools that harvest data for commercial or other purposes.
  • We do not use AI to misrepresent reality in images, audio, text or other media.
  • We do not use any AI tools that obfuscate the steps it takes to create an outcome. The human user of a tool must be in charge of issuing specific instructions to a tool, and be able to follow and verify its process and output.
  • While our internal policy guidelines allow for some experimentation with AI tools, we commit to fully vetting new tools and having fulsome discussions before adopting the use of any AI tool.

What does this mean in practice? In short, our accepted experimentation with and use of AI is very limited. Journalists and newsrooms have used AI tools with limited scope, such as Otter for interview transcription, for many years. In order to increase the accessibility of our written work, The Tyee has also for several years used a tool that turns our written articles into audio files, which has been much appreciated by users who have barriers to reading text on screens. In these cases, there is a human present at the beginning and end of the process, and they are able to verify and correct the work done by the AI tool. This is the narrow scope in which we consider the use of AI tools permissible in our work.

Here are some other common use cases and our associated policy:

Text generators (ChatGPT, Perplexity AI, etc.)

We do not publish journalism that is written or generated by AI. Tyee staff and freelance contributors do not prompt generative AI tools to write articles, and editors will not use AI tools to review drafts, suggest changes, summarize work or fact check.

When conducting research for articles, we don’t rely on answers given by AI chatbots. We limit the use of AI-assisted searches. Any information that is arrived at through an AI-assisted search will be verified by reviewing the original source.

We may experiment with tools to analyze data, but we’ll use caution as we explore the potential and limitations and will scrupulously verify and fact check any resulting product before publication.

In some cases, text that has been generated by AI may be the subject of a story, in which case this will be clearly disclosed to the reader.

Promotional copy provided by third-party clients.

The Tyee works with a wide variety of clients to promote their work through paid advertising deals. This includes display advertising, contests, and clearly-labeled promotional articles in our Tyee Presents section. Oftentimes these pieces contain copy written and submitted by the advertising client. This content is not considered journalism work for the purposes of this policy, but we strongly discourage its use in the drafting of written copy, and will provide copywriting support if needed to avoid the use of AI..

Image generators (DALL-E, Midjourney, etc.)

We do not use generative AI to create or significantly alter news images. We do not use generative AI to introduce or remove elements of news photographs. We do not use AI to generate portraits of sources, including illustrations. This includes Facetune and other aesthetic-enhancing tools to alter a subject’s face. We check that photos submitted to us by sources follow these guidelines.

Staff and freelancers may use standard AI Photoshop or Canva tools that remove backgrounds, extend backgrounds or isolate objects to aid in the making of collages or other creative story art, but not for editing photographs that depict real-time news events.

We source images for stories from commissioned photographers, photo services such as the Canadian Press, original illustrations and collages from Tyee staff and freelancers, and from stock image sites. We will never knowingly purchase images that have been generated or significantly altered using AI.

In some cases, an image created with AI may be the subject of a story, in which case this will be clearly disclosed to the reader.

Audio and video generators

We do not use AI to generate audio or video journalism. When producing podcasts, we do not use AI tools to insert any words that a person did not say or augment the sound of their voice. We do not use AI editing tools that make decisions about what to cut and keep in a podcast or video.

Producers may use AI tools to make minor adjustments to audio to enhance a source’s clarity of speech or reduce background noise.

We source music for audio and video projects from original work performed by artists and royalty-free music purchased from online marketplaces. We do not knowingly purchase, publish or otherwise use music generated by AI.

Certain tools, such as speech-to-text transcription tools, may be used to transcribe interviews done in the course of reporting, as long as the content can be verified by a person. Similarly, text-to-speech tools that create audio versions of written stories to increase accessibility of our written work can be used, so long as the output can be verified by a person.

In some cases, audio created with AI may be the subject of a story, in which case this will be clearly disclosed to the reader.

AI agents

We don’t use AI customer service agents to interact with our readers and members. When Tyee Builders (people who financially contribute to The Tyee) contact us, we do not employ the use of AI agents to handle communications. Readers and supporters of The Tyee will always be interacting with a real person. Similarly, we do not use AI agents to moderate our comments or field editorial pitches.