• by Ray Schultz , October 19, 2023

Bereft of reporters who want to do the job, Vermont’s White River Valley Herald is using ChatGPT to cover local meetings. 

Editor and publisher Tim Calabro asked ChatGPT to create a summary of a local selectboard meeting, according to the Vermont news site Seven Days, and compared the result against a transcript of the event. 

His verdict: “It wasn’t awful.” 

Calabro admitted that he has had trouble getting paid correspondents and volunteers to cover the long, boring meetings that take place at night. But Calabro refined his technique, and succeeded in getting ChatGPT to write stories using the Associated Press Stylebook. He has published a dozen AI-generated meeting stories, Seven Days reports.