Some Los Angeles Times opinion pieces will now be published with an artificial intelligence-generated rating of their political content, and an AI-generated list of alternative political views on that issue, the paper’s biotech billionaire owner announced on Monday.
The new AI “Insights” feature will only be applied to a range of opinion content in the paper, not its news reporting, according to a public letter announcing the change from Patrick Soon-Shiong, the medical entrepreneur who bought the Los Angeles Times in 2018.
The AI-generated tool “operates independently” from the paper’s human journalists, and “the AI content is not reviewed by journalists before it is published”, the Los Angeles Times noted in a summary of the new feature.
The introduction of AI commentary on the paper’s published opinion pieces comes after months of public battles over the role of journalism between Soon-Shiong and Los Angeles Times opinion journalists, conflicts that mirror similar Donald Trump-era battles at the Washington Post, owned by the Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos.
Bezos recently announced that the Washington Post would only publish opinion pieces that support “personal liberties and free markets”, and that “viewpoints opposing those pillars will be left to be published by others.”
Soon-Shiong, who, like Bezos, has been accused of “anticipatory obedience” to Trump, and publicly praised by Elon Musk, is taking a different tack in reshaping his newspaper’s editorial and opinion section, which had recently promoted more liberal and progressive viewpoints.
In 2024, Soon-Shiong, like Bezos, blocked his paper’s editorial board from endorsing Kamala Harris for president, setting off a wave of resignations of opinion section staffers and prompting some Los Angeles Times readers to cancel their subscriptions in protest.
Soon-Shiong celebrated the debut of his new “Viewpoints” tool, posting on Twitter/X, Musk’s social media platform, that it was a victory in the effort to expose people to a wider range of viewpoints. “Now the voice and perspective from all sides can be heard, seen and read –no more echo chamber,” Soon-Shiong posted on X.
Several recent Los Angeles Times opinion pieces were labeled by the new AI tool as having a viewpoint that “generally aligns with a Center Left point of view”, and some were followed by “different views” that summarized pro-Trump talking points on the piece’s topic.
A Los Angeles Times opinion column that argues “Trump’s latest cruel attempt to ban transgender troops won’t survive without a fight,” is now followed by a summary of “different views”, including the note: “The Trump administration justifies the ban by claiming transgender identity conflicts with military values like ‘humility, integrity, and discipline,’ alleging it undermines unit cohesion and operational readiness.” The column’s author, Robin Abcarian, had already quoted that perspective directly in the column itself.
Another opinion column on Ukraine, “Trump is surrendering a century’s worth of US global power in a matter of weeks,” is followed by an AI-generated summary of “different views” that includes a description of Trump’s Ukraine policy “a pragmatic reset of US foreign policy”, and notes: “Advocates of Trump’s approach assert that European allies have free-ridden on US security guarantees for decades and must now shoulder more responsibility.”
A Los Angeles Times staff editorial that argues “Keeping at-risk residents from losing their housing will be a key to solving homelessness,” is now followed by AI-generated commentary that critics have also focused on “chronic underfunding and bureaucratic inefficiencies, particularly within the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority,” and: “Over 60% of Angelenos at risk of homelessness are not leaseholders, limiting the impact of eviction defense programs and requiring broader strategies.”
The union representing Los Angeles Times journalists has repeatedly raised concerns about Soon-Shiong’s efforts to use outside AI tools to produce commentary on the newspaper’s own journalism.
“We support efforts to improve media literacy and clearly distinguish our news report from our opinion pages. But we don’t think this approach – AI-generated analysis unvetted by editorial staff – will do much to enhance trust in the media,” Matt Hamilton, vice-chair of LATimes Guild, said in a statement on Monday. “Quite the contrary: this tool risks further eroding confidence in the news. And the money for this endeavor could have been directed elsewhere: supporting our journalists on the ground who have had no cost-of-living increase since 2021.”
Soon-Shiong’s initial public comments on a podcast in December about his plan to label his newspaper’s journalism with an AI-generated “bias meter” prompted fierce pushback from the union representing the paper’s journalists.
Union leaders said in December that the paper’s owner “has publicly suggested his staff harbors bias, without offering evidence or examples”, and pledged they would continue to report according to the paper’s longstanding journalism ethics standards.
In his own statement on Monday, Soon-Shiong defended his new AI feature as in line with the paper’s mission statement, which says that the paper will “strive to take into account different perspectives, particularly if they don’t align with our own, to inform our views”.
“The purpose of Insights is to offer readers an instantly accessible way to see a wide range of different AI-enabled perspectives alongside the positions presented in the article,” Soon-Shiong said in a statement.
The paper made clear that the content provided by Soon-Shiong’s new AI Insights feature, which will not be not reviewed by the Los Angeles Times’ journalists, may not be accurate, noting that “artificial intelligence can be imperfect and incomplete”, and urging readers to report any errors that they find.
The political ratings feature will use “viewpoint analysis” to label Los Angeles Times content with a political perspective as “Left, Center Left, Center, Center Right or Right,” the paper said, producing these ratings through a partnership with Particle.News, a startup founded in 2024 by former Twitter engineers.
These ratings will apply not only to the paper’s opinion section pieces, but to any “articles that offer a point of view on an issue”, the paper said in a statement. That includes not only opinion columns and editorials, but also “news commentary, criticism, reviews, and more”, the paper said.
Soon-Shiong also announced the paper would be more clearly labeling its articles to distinguish news from opinion. “Any content written from a point of view may be labeled Voices, which helps to strengthen the separation between what’s news and what’s not,” he said in his statement.
The AI analysis of the content of these “voices” pieces, and alternate viewpoints, will be provided through a partnership with Perplexity, an AI-powered search engine company, the Los Angeles Times said.
The last remaining Los Angeles Times opinion section staffer announced in late February that she would take a buyout and leave the paper, the Columbia Journalism Review reported.
