How The Rio Times Uses AI

The Rio Times publishes far more than a newsroom of our size could write by hand. We do that with an automated system. This page explains how that system works, what remains under human control, and how we maintain accuracy, independence, and editorial accountability.

What is automated

Most articles on this site are drafted by software. The system monitors and processes many of the sources a traditional newsroom would consult: news feeds, official releases, market and economic data, public records, our own 17-year archive, and reporting from other outlets. It then produces a balanced, evidence-based draft drawing on information and viewpoints from across the political, economic and intellectual spectrum, following rules set by our editors: what to cover, what to leave alone, how to structure a piece, which sources to prioritize, and what not to assert.

Headlines, summaries, category assignment, tagging, and the selection of related articles are also automated.

Why we automate

We use automation not only to expand our coverage, but to reduce the structural cost of producing independent journalism. A newsroom that can operate sustainably on a smaller revenue base is less dependent on advertisers, investors, donors, political patrons, or other outside interests. Our goal is to reach and maintain break-even with a substantially leaner cost structure than a conventional high-volume newsroom.

This does not eliminate commercial pressure, and it does not excuse weak journalism. The publication is funded through premium memberships and clearly labeled sponsored posts. The Rio Times does not accept display or programmatic advertising. Sponsored posts are kept separate from independent editorial coverage and do not determine what we cover, how we report it, or what conclusions we reach. Reducing the number of outside parties on whom the publication depends materially strengthens our editorial independence and allows us to meet our operating costs without giving those parties a voice in our coverage.

What is not automated

Editors decide what the system covers and what it ignores. Editors set and change the rules it works to. Editors decide what happens when something is wrong. Corrections, retractions, and editor’s notes are written by people. Our Editorial Standards and Corrections Policy are written by people and applied by people.

Our bylines

Some author names on this site are the names of people. Others are AI-assisted editorial personas: labels attached to a subject area so that readers can follow a beat, not claims that a particular journalist wrote the piece.

We have been developing and refining this AI newsroom since January 2026. We are now ready to present it publicly in full. Every author page clearly states whether a byline belongs to a person or an AI-assisted editorial persona, and every automatically drafted article explains how it was produced and where editorial responsibility rests.

Review

Every article is created under detailed house rules and reviewed and approved by an editor before it is published. That review is the point at which a machine-written draft becomes something The Rio Times stands behind, and it is where responsibility sits.

Review is not infallible. Both failures described below passed through it. When review does not catch something, we correct the article in the open and explain what went wrong.

How we check our work

Articles pass through several checks at different stages: where a claim comes from and whether the source is what it appears to be; whether the central event is actually current rather than an old announcement resurfacing; whether figures are internally consistent; an automated review of the claims a draft makes; and a final review by an editor before publication.

Coverage of these checks varies by article type, and several of them are still being improved. We say this rather than claiming a complete or infallible system. In June 2026 we reported a preliminary finding as established fact, and in July 2026 we presented a 2017 announcement as current news. Both passed editorial review; both are recorded in our Corrections and Clarifications log with what went wrong and what we changed. We will keep adding controls, and we will keep publishing the cases where they did not hold.

Bias, evidence, and viewpoint diversity

The Rio Times applies one set of house rules to every article, whoever or whatever drafted it. Working this way reduces the influence any single writer’s politics can have on what we publish and how we frame it, but it does not remove bias, and we will not pretend otherwise. Models, the feeds and documents we read, the rules we write, and the editorial judgments we make can all carry assumptions with them.

What we can commit to, and be judged on, is this: claims are tied to evidence we can cite; on contested subjects we seek sources across political, economic, and intellectual viewpoints rather than a single camp; we distinguish established fact from interpretation and from what is still uncertain; and opinion and analysis are labeled as such and kept apart from news reporting.

We are developing additional anti-bias checks for prompts and drafts. These checks will look for one-sided framing, loaded language, unsupported causal claims, omitted credible counter-evidence, and disputed claims presented as settled fact. We will describe them as active safeguards only after they have been tested against real output.

How we learn and improve

No production system, human or automated, is error-free. When a substantive issue is identified, we correct it publicly, explain what changed, and use it to improve our safeguards. Two recent cases show how that process works.

In July 2026, the system presented a 2017 announcement about a brewery in Hidalgo as current news. We retracted the article, left an editor’s note at the original address rather than deleting the page, and added a check that dates the central event of every article.

In June 2026, we reported a cocaine seizure in Brazilian timber as established fact when the finding was preliminary. Laboratory analysis found no cocaine. We rewrote the article, replaced the headline and summary, added the sourcing the piece had lacked, published a follow-up on the cost to the Bolivian forestry sector, and kept the original web address. The correction was published on 18 July 2026.

Our published correction record

Between 1 January and 1 August 2026, The Rio Times published 10,965 articles. Over that period, two cases required a formal public correction or retraction. Both are set out in full in our Corrections and Clarifications log, which we began publishing on 18 July 2026. That is a published-correction incidence of approximately 0.18 per 1,000 articles, or one formal case for every 5,483 articles published.

In a public benchmark covering the same period, the countable incidence was 11.39 correction items per 1,000 published content items at The Guardian and 5.65 correction columns per 1,000 published URLs at The New York Times. Our published incidence is therefore much lower in this comparison. The units, editorial products, and correction practices are not identical, however, and published corrections measure what a newsroom finds and declares, not the underlying factual-error rate. We publish these figures as a transparent comparison, not as proof that we make fewer mistakes than every other newsroom.

Our log is young, and we would rather it grew than stayed short for the wrong reasons. The standard we set is simple: when a substantive error is identified, it is dated, explained, corrected openly, and permanently connected to the article.

The standards we hold ourselves to

The Rio Times voluntarily holds itself to the same core standards that leading news organizations set out publicly: accuracy and verification before publication; a preference for primary sources and official records; a right of reply for anyone facing a serious allegation; visible and permanent corrections; retractions when a central claim does not stand; clear separation of independent journalism from paid commercial content; named human accountability; and open disclosure of ownership, funding, automation, and byline identity.

We are not externally certified, and we do not claim that publishing standards makes every article perfect. We are continuing to strengthen our written rules on anonymous sources, gifts and conflicts of interest, privacy and harm, plagiarism and attribution, source links, update labels, and independent complaints. We state both our standards and our gaps so that readers can judge whether our work matches our promises.

Who is responsible

The Rio Times is owned and operated by Matthias Camenzind, who is Publisher and Editor-in-Chief. Responsibility for everything published on this site, including everything the automated system produces, rests with him and with The Rio Times. Not with a vendor, not with a model, and not with a byline.

Telling us we are wrong

Email [email protected] with the headline or link, the passage in question, and what you believe the correct position to be. Supporting documents or official sources speed things up considerably. We acknowledge every report and tell you the outcome, whether or not we change the article.

For anything else, including editorial complaints, email [email protected].

The Rio Times, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.