AP Photo/Julia Nikhinson
Where does Vice President Kamala Harris like to purchase her burritos? Was she tough on crime as a prosecutor? And among a given trio of Republicans, with whom would she rather be stuck in an elevator? These questions, both serious and not-so, can be answered by the San Francisco Chronicle’s AI-powered “Kamala Harris News Assistant.”
The tool compiles 29 years of Chronicle reporting via an AI-powered chat interface to address readers’ queries about the presidential candidate. All responses are concise, easy-to-read, and include links to the original articles from which the information is pulled.
“We have the best-in-class, local journalism in our markets, so how can we make it more discoverable?” Tim O’Rourke, VP of Content Strategy at Hearst Newspapers, which owns the SF paper, told Mediaite’s Aidan McLaughlin on Hearst’s decision to harness AI in its newsrooms. “How can we allow readers to find [the information] on their terms?”
For O’Rourke and his team, AI is the answer.
“When we really have a unique content corpus that we can leverage, we want to make sure that information is available to our readers,” he said.
The Chronicle has had no shortage of reporting on Harris over the past three decades. The vice president and current presidential candidate was born in the Bay Area and her career took off there.
After Harris graduated from Washington D.C.’s Howard University, she returned to the Bay Area for her law degree from San Francisco’s UC Hastings College of the Law. Shortly thereafter, in 1990, she began her political career as the assistant district attorney in Alameda County.
From 2004 to 2011, Harris served as the District Attorney of San Francisco, pursuing what she called a “smart on crime” philosophy that aimed for tough prosecution of violent crimes and rehabilitation for nonviolent criminals. Later, from 2011 to 2017, she served as California’s Attorney General, where she continued to support a mix of progressive reforms (including her refusal to defend Proposition 8, a voter-approved ban on same-sex marriage) as well as more traditional law enforcement (such as upholding California’s death penalty laws).
As she has mounted a slapdash bid for the presidency following President Joe Biden’s exit from the race, that past has naturally come under scrutiny. And the Chronicle has covered those stretches of Harris’s career in depth.
The Chronicle announced that the decision to center this news assistant around Harris was not a political one, writing in a statement that they can’t offer the same “level of expertise or coverage depth” for former President Donald Trump.
O’Rourke said Hearst hopes to continue expanding its use of AI.
Earlier this year, Hearst released a similarly structured but more limited chat experience, Chowbot, that compiled nearly 1,000 restaurant reviews written by Chronicle contributors to address readers’ Bay Area restaurant-related questions.
Hearts’s decision to lean-into AI’s capabilities comes amid widespread concern that AI poses a serious threat to newsrooms.
O’Rourke said he understands the concerns regarding what AI could do in the hands of the wrong actors, but he sees it as a huge opportunity if used effectively by journalists to improve the breadth of their coverage.
“We’re looking to harness AI to enhance our journalism, not to replace journalists,” he said, adding, “We’re going to do it cautiously and we’re going to do it conservatively, but we’re going to push forward and we’re going to make sure we hit our [ethical] standards. We’re going to take advantage of every opportunity we have with this new technology that’s evolving so quickly and provides so many opportunities for local news.”
