Religion Unplugged: Guidance And Policies On Using AI In Our Work
Updated March 2, 2026
This policy was adapted with permission from Poynter’s AI Ethics Guidebook. Thank you, Kelly McBride, Alex Mahadevan and Tony Elkins, for authoring much of this policy and sharing it with newsrooms like ours.
Generative artificial intelligence is the use of large language models to create something new, such as text, images, graphics and interactive media. Although generative AI has the potential to improve newsgathering, it also has the potential to harm journalists’ credibility and our unique relationship with our audience.
Our Journalistic Values
As we proceed, the following five core values will guide our work. These principles apply explicitly to the newsroom and other non-news activities, including fundraising, events, marketing and development.
1. Transparency (Both internal and external)
Religion Unplugged relies on real journalists, interviewing real people, and relying on real sources. In the rare case we use AI externally in our journalism, we will document and describe the tools with specificity. In the rare cases when AI tools influence audience-facing content, we will tell the audience in ways that both disclose and educate news consumers.
As journalists, part of our job is to empower the audience with news literacy skills. AI literacy – understanding how generative AI works, what benefits it brings to the information ecosystem and how to avoid AI-generated misinformation – is a subset of news literacy.
2. Accuracy and human verification
All information generated by AI requires human verification. Everything we publish will live up to our standards of verification. Increasingly in all of our work, it is important to be explicit about how we know facts are facts. This will be particularly important when using AI.
3. Audience service
Our work in AI should be guided by what will be useful to our audience as we serve them. We have made a promise to our audience to provide them with real stories about the impact of religion on people’s lives and public life around the world.
4. Privacy and security
Our relationship with our audience is rooted in trust and respect. To that end, as we utilize AI to customize content or develop products that alter the way content is delivered, we will protect our audience’s data in accordance with our newsroom’s privacy policies. Our policies forbid entering sensitive or identifying information about users, sources or even our own staff into any generative AI tools.
As technology advances and opportunities to customize content for users arise, we will be explicit about how your data is collected — in accordance with our organization’s privacy policy — and how it is used to personalize our audience’s experience. Therefore, we will disclose any editorial content that has been created and distributed based on that personalization.
5. Education
With the four previous principles as our foundation, we will embrace education. We will strive to invest in newsroom training — for both full-time staff and freelancers — so every contributor is knowledgeable about generative AI tools.
Contributors can use AI to:
1. Brainstorm headlines, social media posts, keywords, excerpts and alt text
You must review and edit before publication.
2. Research and find reputable academic sources, studies and news articles to help their reporting process.
Read the primary source and double-check AI’s research. AI is known to hallucinate information.
3. Find contact information for real people and experts you want to interview.
Record and transcribe interviews.
All direct quotes must be checked against the original recording (not AI’s transcript) before submission to publication.
Maintain all transcripts, recordings and notes, and make them readily available to editors or fact-checkers when asked.
Whenever possible, interviews should be conducted over the phone, in person or via video call. Limit email or purely virtual conversations.
4. Check grammar and spelling.
Some older AIai tools, like Grammarly, now offer generative text tools. You can use Grammarly to check for grammar, AP/publication style (by establishing presets in your account) and minor phrasing suggestions. You cannot use Grammarly or similar tools to generate whole sentences or articles.
5. Assist in fact-checking your story.
Look for AI tools like Magisterium, created by Catholic University, that are trained only on a limited number of reliable materials, rather than being completely open-source.
Double-check any hyperlinks AI sends you, then ask yourself the question, Is this a reputable source?
Use of AI alone is not sufficient for independent fact-checking. Facts should be checked against multiple authoritative sources that have been created, edited or curated by human beings. A single source is generally not sufficient; information should be checked against multiple sources.
6. Help calculate statistics or analyze statistics.
Published statistics must be double-checked using conventional methods. Provide editors with raw data and “show your work” on any mathematical analysis.
Contributors cannot use AI to:
Generate photos, videos, graphics, whole sentences, paragraphs, articles or quotes.
Interview someone (no avatar bots interviewing another person or bot on your behalf).
Enter sensitive or identifying information about users, sources or even our own staff into any generative AI tools. This includes photos. Identifying information like name, birthday, nationality, medical information, etc.
Policy Enforcement
If a contributor is found to use generative AI in a way that does not align with our policy, they will be given one opportunity to explain themselves and correct their submission. If a second submission is later found to violate our policies, the piece will not be published. A second offense will result in the contributor no longer being invited to submit future pitches. In some cases, an editor will retroactively review all their previously published works to check for accuracy and other journalistic violations.
Some advice for contributors
If you aren’t sure if your actions will violate our AI policy, just ask us. For submissions, it is better to disclose how you used AI to Religion Unplugged editors up front, than for us to find out you used it later.