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Bloomberg and the Bots

Bloomberg insists its journalists have “full control” over its error-prone A.I. bot—but staffers tell Status they can’t stop it from publishing errors.

Author

Oliver Darcy
April 01, 2025

The Bloomberg website. (Photo by Status)

A few days ago, The New York Times published a remarkable story: Bloomberg News, one of the most powerful forces in business journalism, had introduced factual errors into at least three dozen article pages using its new “takeaways” carousel. The recently introduced artificial intelligence feature, which has been prominently affixed to the top of most stories, was designed to spotlight key points in its reporting.

In a statement to The Times, a Bloomberg spokesperson moved to dismiss concerns about the A.I. carousel, telling reporter Katie Robertson that it is "transparent when stories are updated or corrected." But it was what the spokesperson said next that caught the attention of reporters inside the Bloomberg newsroom.

"Journalists have full control over whether a summary appears—both before and after publication—and can remove any that don’t meet our standards," the Bloomberg spokesperson asserted to The Times.

For the journalists inside the John Micklethwait-led news outlet, however, the statement—like some of the A.I.-generated takeaways themselves—didn't quite hold up…

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