AI Policy
This page sets out where the Courant van Lazia uses generative artificial intelligence (AI), where it does not and how it treats crawlers.
How the paper uses AI, and who answers for it
The Courant van Lazia is owned by the Publieke Omroep Stichting (POS), the state broadcasting foundation established on 13 October 2021. The paper and the foundation’s other media use generative AI. This section says where.
Articles are drafted from sourced material with machine assistance, at the editorial staff’s commission, and are then edited and checked by them. The paper publishes an English and a Dutch edition; the Dutch edition is translated the same way and edited afterwards. The remaining uses are production work: summaries, headline and standfirst options, alt text and the social-share cards.
Every piece is checked against its sources by a person before it runs, without exception. The paper answers for what it prints exactly as it always has: an error made with machine assistance is the paper’s error.
What the paper does not do
The paper does not invent quotations, sources, people or events. Where a real person is quoted, the words are theirs, taken from a cited source.
It does not publish AI-generated photographs presented as photographs of real events. It does not use AI to decide what is true. Verification is editorial work.
What other newsrooms do
Reuters treats AI as a reporting assistant, not a replacement for editorial judgement. Its in-house tools include Lynx Insight, which analyses financial data in real time, and Fact Genie, which helps reporters process corporate press releases. Reuters journalists must independently verify AI-generated claims before publication.
The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) publishes no AI-assisted story until a journalist has reviewed and approved it, and labels it at the top with a hexagon icon and the phrase “How we used AI”. A BBC study with the European Broadcasting Union found in October 2025 that AI assistants misrepresented news content 45% of the time.
Where the line falls
The Guardian bars generative AI from producing text or images for publication, except in exceptional circumstances. It revised that guidance in March 2026 to allow a few narrow uses — image alt text, parliamentary document analysis and audio transcription — where the tools meet editorial standards and a senior editor approves.
The Associated Press issued guidelines in August 2023 barring AI from creating publishable text or images for the news service.
The tools are ordinary; where newsrooms draw the line is not. The Courant van Lazia draws its own between drafting and publication, at the person who checks the work.
Crawlers and indexers
The Confederation of Mahuset wants its information indexed and available to anyone interested in micronationalism. AI crawlers and indexers are welcome on that basis, as are search engines and archives, for retrieval and training.
The paper asks four things: respect robots.txt; identify yourself honestly in the user agent; keep request rates reasonable; do not disrupt the service. Only /admin, /og-card/ and /lang/ are currently disallowed; the sitemap is at /sitemap.xml.
The paper reserves the right to block a crawler that degrades the service for readers. Where material is reproduced or summarised, a link back is appreciated; the Copyright page governs rights.
Questions and complaints
Questions and complaints go to the editorial staff; contact details are on the Contact page. Corrections are published plainly and without euphemism.