If you have visited Canadian Country Life recently, you may have noticed a new popup explaining how artificial intelligence is used on this website.
First, I owe regular readers a small apology.
I know nobody comes to a website hoping to see another popup.
Canadian Country Life already disclosed the use of artificial intelligence in the footer and in several articles discussing how the site is created. However, after being contacted by NewsGuard regarding the use of AI content, I decided that the disclosure should be impossible to miss.
The additional popup is not there because I was trying to hide the use of artificial intelligence before. Quite the opposite. I have discussed it openly because I believe readers deserve to know how the material they are reading is produced.
The popup was added simply to make that transparency even clearer.
Why Canadian Country Life Uses AI
Canadian Country Life is an independent website with a very broad range of subjects.
Articles can involve Canadian history, agriculture, energy, economics, international trade, rural life, skilled trades, politics, government policy and current events. The site also includes calculators, interactive tools, graphics and other resources.
Artificial intelligence makes it possible for a small independent publication to do things that would traditionally require a much larger team.
AI may assist me with:
- researching a subject and locating potential sources;
- organizing information;
- preparing an initial draft;
- editing and improving readability;
- comparing data;
- explaining complicated subjects in plain language;
- search-engine optimization;
- creating illustrations and infographics;
- brainstorming questions and angles I may not have considered; and
- helping build some of the interactive tools available on the website.
But there is an important distinction.
AI assists with the work. It does not decide what Canadian Country Life believes or what Canadian Country Life publishes.
The Ideas and Editorial Decisions Are Human
The topics covered on this website come from human curiosity, questions, experiences and opinions.
I decide what I want to investigate.
I decide which arguments I agree or disagree with.
I decide what deserves further research.
I decide whether an article gets published.
And I review the material before it appears on the website.
Artificial intelligence can help organize an argument or explain an issue, but it cannot replace human judgment.
That distinction is especially important when Canadian Country Life covers politics, trade, economics or other subjects where facts and opinions can easily become mixed together.
AI Can Be Wrong
There is another reason I believe disclosure is important.
Artificial intelligence is not infallible.
It can misunderstand information, misinterpret a source, use outdated information or confidently produce something that simply is not correct.
That is why Canadian Country Life increasingly follows a simple editorial standard:
Verify the factual foundation.
Where possible, factual claims are checked against original or primary sources such as government documents, legislation, statistics, corporate announcements, court documents and official statements.
Provide sources.
Readers should be able to examine important sources themselves rather than simply being asked to trust an article.
Separate fact from opinion.
Commentary should be recognizable as commentary. An opinion should not be presented as an established fact.
Do not diagnose people.
Political criticism can be strong without pretending to know someone’s medical or mental-health condition.
Label AI-generated satire and illustrations.
An illustration should never be presented in a way that could reasonably cause someone to believe an invented scene actually occurred.
Correct mistakes.
If something is found to be factually wrong, the goal is to correct it rather than defend it.
Those standards apply whether AI helped produce an article or not.
Why the New Popup?
NewsGuard evaluates news and information websites using criteria that include credibility and transparency.
One of the issues addressed in its published standards is whether publishers that regularly use artificial intelligence clearly disclose that use to their readers and maintain appropriate human oversight.
That is a reasonable expectation.
Canadian Country Life already had AI disclosures in several locations, but after NewsGuard contacted me, I decided there should be no possibility of someone overlooking them.
So I added the popup.
It provides readers with two simple choices:
Read the AI disclosure, or
continue directly to the article.
Nothing is being hidden behind it and readers are not required to agree with anything before continuing.
It is simply another layer of transparency.
Sorry About the Extra Click
For regular readers, I understand that it means one more thing appearing on the screen before getting to the article you came to read.
For that, I apologize for the inconvenience.
I generally dislike unnecessary website clutter myself.
But in this case, I decided that being overly transparent was preferable to leaving even a small amount of uncertainty about how the website operates.
AI Is a Tool — Not the Publisher
I don’t believe the important question is simply:
“Was AI used?”
A better question is:
“How was AI used, who made the decisions, and was the information checked?”
A calculator doesn’t replace an accountant.
Diagnostic software doesn’t replace a mechanic.
A word processor doesn’t replace a writer.
And artificial intelligence does not automatically replace the person using it.
It is a tool.
A remarkably powerful one, certainly, but still a tool.
At Canadian Country Life, it is used to research, organize, analyze, create and communicate more effectively.
The ideas, questions, opinions, editorial direction and final decision to publish remain human decisions.
Transparency Matters
People are understandably becoming more cautious about what they read online.
AI-generated websites can be produced quickly and sometimes with very little oversight. False information can also spread incredibly quickly through social media, traditional websites and AI systems alike.
I don’t want Canadian Country Life to operate that way.
Readers should know how this website is created.
They should be able to see the sources behind important claims.
They should be able to recognize opinion when they encounter it.
And they should know when artificial intelligence has played a role in creating the material they are reading.
That was already my policy.
The new disclosure popup simply makes it much more obvious.
So if you’re a regular reader wondering why yet another box suddenly appeared on your screen, that’s the reason.
Sorry about the additional popup — and thank you for understanding why I decided to add it.
I’d rather be accused of disclosing the use of AI too prominently than of not disclosing it enough.
Canadian Country Life uses artificial intelligence as an editorial, research and creative assistant. Topics, opinions, editorial direction and publication decisions remain under human control.
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