"Tagesspiegel" Suspends Editor Over Undisclosed AI-Generated Articles

The German newspaper "Tagesspiegel" has taken decisive action against Stephan-Andreas Casdorff, its former editor-in-chief and current Editor-at-Large, after discovering that he used artificial intelligence to generate opinion pieces without disclosure.

Casdorff, who led the newspaper from 2004 to 2018, has admitted to the serious lapse, calling it a "huge mistake" that has damaged both the publication and himself. He stated that he should have clearly marked the AI-generated texts and not published them.

"Tagesspiegel" has removed the offending articles and suspended Casdorff's contributions indefinitely. The newspaper stressed that while AI can be a tool to facilitate certain work steps, it cannot replace the core of journalism. Key journalistic functions like judgment, information weighting, analysis, and writing must remain the responsibility of human authors. Publishing entire texts generated by AI violates the paper's editorial guidelines and jeopardizes its journalistic credibility.

In response to this breach, "Tagesspiegel" announced an internal investigation, aided by external experts, to ensure AI has not been improperly used in other areas of the newsroom. The exact circumstances that led to the discovery of Casdorff's actions were not detailed in the statement.