In a new report, Futurism claims that Gannett—the major publisher behind USA Today and many local newspapers—has been using AI to generate a large number of articles about local lottery results that often point users to an online gambling platform called Jackpocket. That would be ethically questionable on its own—Futurism points out that Gannett itself has widely covered the recent, destructive rise in gambling addiction—but there’s another catch. The DraftKings-owned platform entered into an “exclusive agreement” with Gannett in 2023, implying that Gannett gets some sort of financial compensation when users navigate from an article to the site. In many of the AI-generated articles, Jackpocket is referred to as the “official digital lottery courier of the USA TODAY Network,” so the company isn’t even trying to hide it.
While some of the posts are attributed to individual papers’ “staff” and others have been given seemingly human bylines, the formula remains almost identical. Articles start with a boilerplate lede, “The [insert state] Lottery offers multiple draw games for those aiming to win big. Here’s a look at [insert date], results for each game,” and end with the following footnote: “This results page was generated automatically using information from TinBu and a template written and reviewed by a [insert state] editor. You can send feedback using this form. Our News Automation and AI team would love to hear from you.”
The company isn’t denying it either. “By leveraging automation in our newsroom, we are able to expand coverage and enable our journalists to focus on more in-depth reporting,” a Gannett spokesperson shared. “With human oversight at every step, this reporting meets our high standards for quality and accuracy to provide our audiences more valuable content which they’ve always associated with Gannett and the USA TODAY Network.” They also maintained that the articles, which contain content that can just as easily be found with a simple Google search, are editorial rather than advertorial because Jackpocket wasn’t involved in their creation and affiliate links were only added in states where Jackpocket legally operates.
Gannett has found itself mired in a slew of other AI-related controversies over the years, which you can read about in the Futurism report. Still, mass-promoting AI-generated gambling content feels like a step into a whole new realm of moral bankruptcy. Who knows where we’ll go from here.
