AI Use Policy

In short.

  • A named human editor signs off on every published word. No content reaches a reader without editor review — there is no automated publishing path, at any tier.
  • We disclose AI use in proportion to its contribution. Basic tools (spellcheck, grammar) need no disclosure. Material AI editing carries a byline note. AI-drafted pieces carry a byline note and a footer line, both naming the editor who signed off.
  • AI-generated images carry a visible watermark in the bottom-left of the image, naming the model used.
  • AI never sources its own material. When AI is used for analysis, it is always pointed at a specific trusted source by an editor.
  • We do not consent to our content being used to train AI models without written agreement. See our Copyright & Takedown Policy.

1. Why this policy exists

Disrupts Media's four publications are B2B trade press read by professionals who depend on us for accurate, sceptical reporting. AI tools are now part of how journalism is made. This policy sets out, plainly, where and how we use AI — and where we don't — so readers can judge our work with full information.

Three principles sit behind everything below:

  • A human editor signs off on every published word. No content is published without editorial review and explicit sign-off. There is no automated publishing path.
  • Disclosure is proportionate to AI's editorial contribution. Routine tools (spellcheck, grammar) need no disclosure; substantive AI contributions are disclosed clearly.
  • Readers come first. When AI shaped a piece, the reader sees that before they read the piece — not buried in a footer footnote nobody finds.

In this policy, "we", "us" and "our" mean Disrupts Media Limited, the publisher of the Sites.

2. Three tiers of AI use

Tier 1 — Basic writing tools

What it covers: spellcheckers, grammar tools (Grammarly, LanguageTool), autocomplete, formatting helpers, search.

Disclosure: None required. These tools are treated as ordinary editorial infrastructure, the same way we don't disclose use of a dictionary or a thesaurus. They do not contribute editorial substance.

Tier 2 — AI editing support

What it covers: AI used to reword human-written copy, adjust tone, restructure paragraphs, suggest alternative phrasings on copy an editor or writer has already drafted.

Disclosure: A short byline note appears where AI assistance was material to the published version — i.e. where the AI's contribution went beyond surface polish.

Example byline note: "Edited with AI assistance for tone and structure."

Where AI was used only incidentally (one or two sentence rewrites in a longer human-written piece), no disclosure is required.

Tier 3 — AI-drafted from public source material

What it covers: the AI editorial assistant pipeline — AI ingests publicly available press releases or source content and produces a first draft for editor review and sign-off. Also covers AI-assisted analysis of editor-supplied trusted sources (datasets, research papers, reports) where the AI extracts facts, figures and themes for an editor to work from.

Disclosure: A byline note plus a footer line. Both are required.

Byline note: "AI-assisted draft. Edited by [Editor Name]."

Footer line: "Drafted by an AI editorial assistant from publicly available source material; edited and signed off by [Editor Name]."

What we do not do at Tier 3:

  • We do not invent facts, statistics, named people, or quotes.
  • We do not produce opinion pieces from AI drafts.
  • We do not let AI source its own material. When AI is used for analysis, it is always pointed at a specific trusted source by an editor (a dataset we have access to, a research paper, an industry report, a regulatory filing). AI does not run open-ended web searches, scrape unverified material, or select sources of its own initiative. The editor is responsible for what AI is asked to look at.
  • We do not let any AI draft reach a reader without a named human editor's review and approval.

What we may do at Tier 3:

AI-assisted analysis of editor-supplied trusted sources is permitted — extracting key facts, figures, themes, and patterns from datasets, research papers, regulatory filings or industry reports the editor has selected. The editor reviews the extraction, confirms the facts against the source, and decides what makes it into the published piece.

3. Image AI use

What it covers: any image displayed alongside an article that was generated by an AI image model (e.g. Google Gemini, OpenAI image models, Midjourney).

Disclosure: every AI-generated image carries a visible watermark in the bottom-left corner of the image, naming the model used.

Example watermark: "Created by Gemini AI"

This rule is already in production on The Fintech Times for Gemini-generated imagery. It now applies across all four publications going forward.

What this rule does not cover: editorial photography, supplied press imagery, stock photography, infographics. None of these require an AI watermark.

4. The editor sign-off rule

This is the bright line behind the whole policy.

  • No content is published without editor review and explicit sign-off. This applies to every piece on every publication, regardless of how it was drafted.
  • No automated publishing path exists or will be built — for any tier. AI may draft, AI may edit, AI may help analyse editor-supplied source material, but only a named human editor can publish.
  • Tier 3 in particular: the AI editorial assistant pipeline produces drafts only. Drafts land in an editor's review queue, not on a reader's screen.

If you read a piece on a Disrupts Media publication, a named editor put their name to it. That commitment does not change as AI tools improve.

5. What this means for readers

  • On a piece drafted by AI (Tier 3): you see "AI-assisted draft. Edited by [Editor Name]." in the byline, before you read the first word, and the footer line confirms the same.
  • On a piece edited with AI assistance (Tier 2): you see a byline note where the assistance was material.
  • On AI-generated images: you see "Created by [Model] AI" watermarked in the bottom-left corner of the image.
  • On AI-assisted analysis: the same Tier 3 disclosure applies — you know AI helped extract facts, figures and themes from editor-selected source material, and that an editor signed off on what was published.
  • On everything: a named human editor signed off before publication.

Disclosure language is consistent across all four publications. If something doesn't carry a disclosure, that means none of the above applied — the piece was researched, written and edited by humans using no more than basic writing tools.

6. AI training and our content

A separate but related point. We do not consent to our editorial content being used to train artificial intelligence models or any other automated system that produces derivative output, except where we have agreed that use in writing.

If you operate an AI training crawler or scraper, you may not use our content. This applies whether or not you respect robots.txt and whether or not our content is technically accessible to you.

Our position on copyright and on takedown requests is in the Copyright & Takedown Policy.

7. Publication and access

  • This policy is published at /editorial/ai-policy on each of the four brand sites and on the corporate site.
  • A downloadable PDF version is available for partners, advertisers, regulators and any reader who wants to keep a copy.
  • Where Tier 2 or Tier 3 disclosures appear on an article, the disclosure text links back to this policy.

8. Contact us

For any question about how we use AI in our journalism:

Editorial questions: corrections@disruptsmedia.com Licensing or use of our content: legal@disruptsmedia.com Post: Disrupts Media Limited, 41 Luke Street, London EC2A 4DP, United Kingdom

9. About Disrupts Media

Disrupts Media Limited Registered in England & Wales — Company No. 09447878 Registered office: 41 Luke Street, London EC2A 4DP, United Kingdom

10. Document history

| Date | Version | Change | |---|---|---| | 2026-04-29 | 1.0 | Initial policy. Three-tier framework: Tier 1 (basic tools — no disclosure), Tier 2 (AI editing — byline note where material), Tier 3 (AI-drafted from public sources — byline note plus footer). All AI-generated images carry a visible watermark in the bottom-left corner naming the model used. The editor sign-off rule applies to every tier: no content is published without a named human editor's review and approval. | | 2026-04-29 | 1.1 | Tier 3 amended: "Analysis" removed from the opinion / analysis prohibition because AI-assisted analysis of editor-supplied trusted source material (datasets, research papers, reports) is a permitted use. New explicit constraint added: AI never sources its own material — always pointed at a specific trusted source by an editor. New "What we may do at Tier 3" sub-section covering the analysis use case. New open item added for AI-assisted analysis tooling and editor workflow. | | 2026-05-14 | 1.2 | Editorial content unchanged. Re-stamped into the shared website policy template: full company entity block added (Disrupts Media Limited, Company No. 09447878, 41 Luke Street, London EC2A 4DP); "Applies to" extended to www.disruptsmedia.com; contact section split out; new §6 added stating that our content may not be used to train AI models without written agreement, with cross-reference to the Copyright & Takedown Policy. | | 2026-05-18 | 1.3 | Public-facing presentation cleanup. "What changed from v1.1" intro callout replaced with a plain-English "In short" summary aligned with the rest of the Disrupts Media policy set (matches Privacy Policy pattern). §8 Open items section removed — internal editorial / engineering TODOs should not appear on a published policy page; §9–§11 renumbered to §8–§10. Editorial position unchanged. |