Business · Wired
“I’m feeling a strain in close and personal relationships," Lichtenberg admitted Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism
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In an email, Fortune’s editor in chief, Alyson Shontell, tried to steer me away from the idea that AI was taking over the jobs of reporters under her watch.
Key facts
- Sportswriting legend Red Smith once said that writing a column is easy: “All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.” In 2026, though, no blood is required — He has written 600 stories since July; on one day this past February, he had seven bylines
- Last month, their colleague Maxwell Zeff wrote about writers who unapologetically generate at least some of their prose via unbylined AI collaborators
- That same week, The Wall Street Journal profiled Fortune reporter Nick Lichtenberg, who explained to the paper that he leans heavily on AI to churn out his work
Summary
Sportswriting legend Red Smith once said that writing a column is easy: “All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.” In 2026, though, no blood is required. Last month, their colleague Maxwell Zeff wrote about writers who unapologetically generate at least some of their prose via unbylined AI collaborators. The star of his piece was Alex Heath, a tech reporter who said he routinely has AI write drafts based on his notes, interview transcripts, and emails. That same week, The Wall Street Journal profiled Fortune reporter Nick Lichtenberg, who explained to the paper that he leans heavily on AI to churn out his work. Until recently, the consensus had been that using large language models to create commercial prose was verboten. The team don’t use it for editing, either, which is a less alarming, though still troublesome practice of several others cited in Zeff’s column.