Recently, there has been considerable debate about how AI will be used to produce content at firekRown. Aside from misrepresentation, I want to clarify how our team is leveraging AI and expectations that we established several months ago.
Media companies that are not using AI at this point are already behind the scenes, especially in the digital space. Promises not to use AI sets a dangerous precedent.
Large-scale language models (LLMS) are evolving rapidly, and keeping pace with them is a continuing challenge.
AI is one of the most transformative technologies in history and a powerful resource for all businesses, including the media. We want to ensure that journalists have access to the best technology available. I'm not afraid to invest a lot to achieve that.
Our mission is to be beneficial and respond to the markets we serve, especially during breaking news events. AI can create more content on topics that audiences care about.
Firekrown is not alone. According to the state of journalism in 2025, 77% of journalists, a comprehensive research study by Muck Rack, use AI tools to help develop content.
Our official policy is that the authors who publish content, whether AI assist or not, are responsible for all words.
AI's Firecrown's embrace sparked concern among former journalists threatened by the technology. They have misunderstood our attitude towards incorporating AI and other automated tools into their work rather than using these tools to make the work easier and productive. This is a shame.
The quality of content has been significantly improved from reporters who use AI for copy editing, ideas and research, particularly using legal and legislative documents. Additionally, you can publish content more frequently and more frequently, especially by breaking the story.
A major example is the FAA-released mosaic regulatory documents with little context. Using AI tools, our team searched the entire document for related topics and published content within an hour of release. Traditionally, this took much longer without the ability of AI.
We applied the same approach to filing and awarding major cases where legal documents could be overwhelming for the most experienced journalists.
AI can surpass our top story tellers for copy editing and research, gain deeper insight into subjects that will captivate readers, and generate more content. The goal is high quality content and delivers faster.
We also develop AI solutions that allow us to deliver personalized content to our readers based on our preferences and interests. Combined with human editors and journalists with deep subject expertise, you can explore a much wider range of topics in a niche that previously had limited resources to cover. This is the power of AI Revolution, providing the editorial team with tools to increase productivity while building personal experience and interest. This is one of the most exciting applications of AI in our business.
Don't worry, we never use AI to write experiential or product reviews, but they are invaluable in tracking and responding to deployment news. This coincides with practices at global leaders such as Fox News, The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg.
Continuing to evolve
AI poses several threats to our business, and we understand concerns, particularly about the impact on our business model in the media. I've seen media companies fail by not accepting digitalization or the internet, so I'm not going to go that path.
This journey requires the editorial team to evolve with the times, but we recognize that this doesn't always happen. We believe transparency and automation about where AI is used is essential.
The main concern for our business is how AI is transforming Google search. Publishers have long relied on traffic. That trust is waning.
Search volume has dropped sharply as Google introduced AI summary and AI modes.
We advised our team to assume that emotions resonate across other media will approach search traffic to zero in the next 24 months.
Over the past year we have tested AI-assisted articles and found that they far outweigh non-AA-assisted articles. As the generated content engine plays a bigger role in digital traffic, AI-backed articles are better on almost every metric. Traffic, site time, engagement, and more. In the digital world, platforms determine which articles are read. You have to adapt.
For example, almost every digital site has implemented tools to enable content to be more discovered through the generator AI engine. Sites that employ these tools increased traffic two or three times during this period. These results encourage us and we believe that further investment is guaranteed. Sites where editorial teams such as Avweb resisted had dramatic traffic collapses. Our goal is to encourage these teams to use the best tools to succeed in the next digital age.
This trend is not inherent to fear burning. Many other publishers have reported similar patterns.
In some cases, they had to break up with a team that resisted change. I understand that this could have caused disappointment and tension, but I am not going to fail the brand due to technophobia. The digital world can be feasts and hunger, and is forced to adapt.
AI Writing Story
Recently, we have been accused of using AI to write authentic stories, especially in aviation groups.
This is false.
Research uses AI tools to break down complex documents, transcription, and similar tasks, but all inputs and outputs are carefully reviewed by the editorial team.
AI allows editors and journalists to be much more productive in a significant amount of time-consuming task that is spent research, editing copies, ideas, and often creating high-quality content.
Another misconception is that AI is a cost-saving measure.
This is probably true for other companies, but we have invested heavily in emerging technologies built specifically for publishers. AI tools that provide our workforce per user are the most expensive software to license. We will continue to invest in our editorial team and hire journalists and editors who will embrace the future rather than resist.
I know that some traditional journalists are upset about adopting this technology. This is expected. The media business model is covered by the same technology.
One such tool, developed by the former editors of major stores, including the Wall Street Journal, has been tested in other major outlets. For example, this tool shoots an entire audio or video file and an entire field note, and transcribes it into text that can be quickly converted to articles under the direction of a journalist.
The easier it is to transfer content from video or audio to written text, the more often we can provide a direct account of the products and services our team experiences. This really makes an impact.
Our overarching goal is to provide content producers with AI as a tool to better serve audiences. Starting research, collecting real-time break news and helping with proofreading are just a few of the AI supports our team.
The AI era is here and we are going to accept it.
For transparency, we share ways to instruct content teams to use AI in their daily work, including:
When using AI tools
- Find sources for research
- Watching broken news, new trends, or stories
- Transcription of audio or video files for stories such as interviews and podcasts
- Translate field notes into text
- Compression and analysis of large-scale documents such as court filings and regulatory reports.
- Tell the story using large datasets. Even most are Excel experts, not skilled at working with CSV files, but AI can help.
- Project management and task support
- Copy edits and proofreading
- Do research
- Generate content ideas
- Make content more accessible to generative search engines
- Provide tailored content directed at specific interests and niche topics
How to avoid using AI tools
- LLM publishing is fully output. All articles are reviewed, fact-checked and dated back by journalists responsible for published language.
- Use AI to approve or mimic other people's work.
- Licensing remains a challenge, so we use images generated by AI.
- Publish AI-generated summaries or summaries without quoting the source or misrepresenting the origin of the content. This is unethical.
- Allow AI content without editing reviews. This is because it can unintentionally reinforce stereotypes, inaccuracies, or biases from training data.
We borrow the best, fastest, and smartest content from our loyal readers. And firecrown is committed to offering it across the brand.
