There’s been considerable discussion recently about how we use AI for content production at Firecrown. Setting aside misrepresentations, we’d like to clarify how our team leverages AI and the expectations we established months ago.
Any media company not using AI at this point is already behind, particularly in the digital space. Committing to never using AI sets a dangerous precedent.
Large Language Models (LLMs) are evolving rapidly, and keeping pace with them is an ongoing challenge.
AI is one of the most transformative technologies in history and a powerful resource for all companies, including media. We want our journalists to have access to the best technology available, and we’re not afraid to make significant investments to achieve that.
Our mission is to be informative and responsive in the markets we serve, especially during breaking news events. AI enables us to produce more content on topics our audiences care about.
Firecrown is not alone. According to The State of Journalism in 2025, a comprehensive research study by Muck Rack, 77% of journalists use AI tools to assist in developing content.
Our official policy is that any writer who publishes content, whether AI-assisted or not, is responsible for every single word.
Firecrown’s embrace of AI has caused concern among some former journalists intimidated by the technology. They’ve misunderstood our stance on incorporating AI and other automated tools into their work, rather than using these tools to make their jobs easier and more productive. This is unfortunate.
We’ve observed a significant increase in the quality of content from reporters who use AI for copy editing, ideation, and research, particularly with legal and legislative documents. It also enables us to publish content faster and more frequently, especially on breaking stories.
A prime example is the 700-plus-page MOSAIC regulatory document, released by the FAA with little context. Using AI tools, our team searched the entire document for relevant topics and published content within an hour of its release. Traditionally, this would have taken much longer without AI’s capabilities.
We’ve applied the same approach to major court case filings and rulings, where legal documents can be overwhelming even for the most experienced journalists.
AI, for copy editing or research, can supercharge our top storytellers, enabling us to produce more content with deeper insights into subjects that captivate readers. The goal is higher-quality content, delivered faster.
We are also developing AI solutions that allow us to deliver personalized content to our readers based on their preferences and interests. Combined with human editors and journalists who have deep subject matter expertise, we can explore a much wider range of topics in niches we previously had limited resources to cover. This is the power of the AI revolution, which provides our editorial teams with tools to enhance their productivity while building on their personal experiences and interests. This is one of the most exciting applications of AI in our business.
Rest assured, we will never use AI to write experiential or product reviews, though it’s invaluable for tracking and reacting to unfolding news. This aligns with practices at global leaders like Fox News, The Wall Street Journal, and Bloomberg.
Ever-Evolving
AI poses some threats to our business, and we understand concerns about its impact on business models, especially in media. Having seen media companies fail by not embracing digitization or the internet, we don’t intend to follow that path.
This journey requires our editorial teams to evolve with the times, though we recognize this doesn’t always happen. We believe transparency about where we use AI and automation is essential.
A major concern for our business is how AI is transforming Google Search, which publishers have long relied on for traffic. That reliance is waning.
As Google has introduced AI summaries and AI Mode, our search volume has sharply declined.
We’ve advised our team to assume search traffic will approach zero in the next 24 months, a sentiment echoed by other media outlets.
Over the past year, we’ve tested AI-assisted articles and found they significantly outperform non-AI-assisted ones. As generative content engines play a larger role in digital traffic, AI-assisted articles excel in nearly every metric: traffic, time on site, engagement, and more. In the digital world, platforms determine which articles get read. We must adapt.
For instance, on nearly all our digital sites, we’ve implemented tools to make our content more discoverable by generative AI engines. Sites that have adopted these tools have seen traffic increase two to three times during this period. We’re encouraged by these results and believe further investment is warranted. On sites where editorial teams have resisted, such as AVweb, we’ve seen a dramatic traffic collapse. Our goal is to encourage these teams to use tools that best position them for success in the next digital era.
This trend isn’t unique to Firecrown; many other publishers report similar patterns.
In some cases, we’ve had to part ways with teams that resisted change. We understand this may have caused disappointment and tension, but we don’t intend to let any of our brands fail due to technophobia. The digital world can be feast or famine, and we’re forced to adapt.
AI-Written Stories
Recently, we’ve been accused of using AI to write full-fledged stories, particularly in the aviation group, with minimal human oversight.
This is false.
While we use AI tools for research, breaking down complex documents, transcription, and similar tasks, all inputs and outputs are carefully reviewed by our editorial team.
AI enables our editors and journalists to be far more productive with research, copy editing, and ideation, tasks that often consume significant time otherwise spent creating high-quality content.
Another misconception is that AI is a cost-cutting measure.
Perhaps this is true at other companies, but we’ve made substantial investments in emerging technology built specifically for publishers. On a per-user basis, the AI tools we provide our workforce are the most expensive software we license. We continue to invest in our editorial team, hiring journalists and editors who embrace the future rather than resist it.
We know some traditional journalists are upset by our adoption of this technology. This is expected. The media business model is being upended by the same technology.
One such tool, developed by former editors at major outlets, including the Wall Street Journal, is being tested at other major outlets. For instance, this tool takes an entire audio or video file and field notes, then transcribes them into text that can be quickly converted into an article under the direction of a journalist.
The easier it is to transcribe content from video and audio into written text, the more often our team can provide first-hand accounts of the products and services they experience. This is truly impactful.
Our overarching goal is to provide our content producers with AI as a tool to better serve their audiences. Initiating research, gathering real-time breaking news, and assisting with proofreading are just a few ways AI supports our team.
The AI era is here, and we plan to embrace it.
For transparency, we’re sharing how we direct our content team to use AI in their daily work, including:
When We Use AI Tools
- Locating sources for research
- Monitoring breaking news, emerging trends, or stories
- Transcribing audio or video files for stories, such as interviews and podcasts
- Translating field notes into text
- Compressing and analyzing large documents, such as court filings and regulatory reports
- Using large datasets to tell stories. Most aren’t Excel experts or adept at manipulating CSV files, but AI helps.
- Project management and task assistance
- Copy editing and proofreading
- Conducting research
- Generating content ideas
- Making our content more accessible to generative search engines
- Providing tailored content, directed at specific interests and niche topics
How We Won’t Use AI Tools
- Publishing LLM outputs outright. All articles are reviewed, fact-checked, and bylined by journalists responsible for their published words.
- Using AI to plagiarize or mimic others’ work.
- Using AI-generated images, as licensing remains a challenge.
- Publishing AI-generated summaries or recaps without citing sources or misrepresenting content origins, which is unethical.
- Allowing AI content without editorial review, as it may unintentionally reinforce stereotypes, inaccuracies, or biases from training data.
We owe our loyal readers the best, fastest, and smartest content, and Firecrown is committed to delivering that across our brands.
I guess this means the reporters that we knew until last week, are now gone. AI, is that true or false?
Words of Thursday, July 20, 2023
Lets say this perception was one of the triggers to secure Belvoirs aviation assets. A true USP in a market flush full of average content producers. A publication which earned its readers trust over more than two and a half decades. And god almighty forgive me, the AVweb way wasn’t the most modern way of news publishing and peeps (editors and readers alike) liked it.
Maybe you, Mr. Fuller could leave it up to the readers to measure and compare/ contrast your words against what they perceive to be left of this particular publication today, rather than speaking down to people.
Been around for 16-17 years and I for one am not seeing a whole lot more than scorched earth and burned bridges.
Then again, maybe I am not affluent enough to understand these complex business concepts in todays aviation news industry.
Now in the endgame of typical lifecycle for small biz entity that built up a reputation and potential for profitability via a loyal readership. The buy up cycle (I ref as Mr Potatohead phase) develops a marketable product for the next bigger fish to buy up.
Two choices for longterm AvWeb readers, find (or build) the next small tribal aviation gathering, or stay here and provide comments that will allow you to relieve yourself into the wind.
I can tell within a sentence or two if the article has been produced by AI. That’s when I stop reading.
I’m all for making sites accessible to generative search engines, since that’s just the latest flavor of “SEO”.
And using LLM tools to help scan a large document and generate a summary is a good starting point, but in my experience, LLMs are terrible at picking up on context and often get the summaries wrong with regards to the technical details that actually matter.
AI tools should be used in a manner similar to handing off tasks to an intern or 1st-level employee: to offload some of the easily-repeatable tasks and create a first pass, but never as the final product. Experienced journalists should not be relegated to simply proof-reading an AI-generated product.
Put another way, and with an aviation theme, AI tools should be treated in the same way that advanced avionics and autopilots are treated: useful tools but not a replacement for a qualified pilot with good stick-and-rudder skills. But as airlines have found, a reliance upon these tools will degrade those stick-and-rudder and SA skills if they are not allowed to practice them.
Thank you AVweb for continuing to provide content that I find informative and easy to digest. I’ve embraced AI as another tool in my toolbox and have encouraged my employees, family members, and business/social acquaintances to do the same. We are each responsible for the final content we release to our customers, family, or friends under our name, and AI breaks the impasse that is sometimes presented by a blank page and a hot idea.
Lol, thanks for the laugh. Goodbye Fireclown.
Firecrown is doing the “move fast and break things” mentality with a heavy emphasis on breaking things. Other than the weight of the paper stock, Flying Magazine went downhill. I canceled. Then IFR and Aviation Consumer went away without even any sort of announcement or reply to my “where’s my magazine” enquiry. To my chagrin, now I get Flying again. Now Avweb is falling apart.
I am very impressed with the amount of content over on Avbrief in just the last several days. I’ll rely on that and AOPA for my aviation news, though I’m sure that I’ll still stop by Avweb occasionally.
IFR Magaine went away too? And I think you mean Aviation Safety, since I just got a new issue of Aviation Consumer yesterday.
I agree about Flying Magazine, too. For the size of it, there may be only at most 2 or 3 articles I find interesting and worth reading. All of the good writers have left (or perhaps they were some of the “teams that we parted ways with”).
And while we’re at it, while I’ve mostly gotten use to the new forum tools and don’t have any real issues with it now, I have found the redesign of the Avweb page to be, frankly, garbage. I have to do a whole lot more scrolling and clicking to find the article I’m looking for. But there are a lot more intrusive ads, so I’m sure that’s helping with the bottom line.
Thanks for your support, David.
So-called ‘artificial intelligence’ is no better than the total of its programmers ability and it database.
Every day we deal with the quality - NOT - of programmers: sloppy 2-year-olds.
Who tend to bias against freedom in their personal views.
News is full of horror stories of improper use of other’s Intellectual Property in the databases, which are of course collected by the same programmers.
I say AI is dangerous.
( Study says ChatGPT giving teens dangerous advice on drugs, alcohol and suicide - Victoria Times Colonist.)
And a tool of lazy cheapskates.
Like the shysters being roasted by judges for submitting briefs with errors and questionable citations
Also with established techniques like ‘machine learning’ being mis-represented as AI.
Plus deliberately used to mislead: BC Wildfire Service warns AI photos spread misinformation and uncertainty - Victoria Times Colonist.
“Our official policy is that any writer who publishes content, whether AI-assisted or not, is responsible for every single word.”
The proliferation of “Editorial Staff” as the byline makes me doubt this. Signing your work would at least give the appearance that we’re reading from a human rather than something ChatGPT barfed.
This BS would be hilarious were it not so earnest. Its grasping self-justification shrieks desperation.
Audiences will vote and those providers who know how corrosive AI is to journalism will have the courage to abandon it. They will retain readership and the advertisers who covet them. Those who choose to save money with AI ( codified plagiarism) will watch from the sidelines.
I’m not staying with AVWEB.
Way to ruin AVweb. Last week it was still great. This week it is a crappy rag.
The choppy, bullet style of the article was annoying because it betrays a lack of ability to write a coherent narrative. As an old guy who has done some professional writing and editing, I am very unclear on what IS an AI-generated article, but apparently the mellifluous of the Paul Bertorellis is a thing of the past. How about a comparative example of a non-AI writeup next to an AI-piece of journalism so we can actually see the difference?
For those of us who do writing on any sort of professional level, a well written piece, whether it be prose, poetry, a science article for a journal, a lengthy and detailed grant application, or a news article for a news outlet like yours, is a piece of art, of self expression that shows who and what we are. Replacing human writers who write by traditional means with those who are forced to use AI is akin museums insisting they will no longer display works of art not created at least in part by AI. I do not argue that AI has potential to help writers, but AI should be used only as a tool by the writers, and at the writers discretion. The writer, like any artist, must always be the PIC of the project with the discretion to use the tools at his/her disposal as they wish.
Now as for the second elephant in the room, firing Russ, Russ made your magazine what it is today. You were standing on the shoulders of a giant and you decided to kill the giant last week. I’ve been an AvWeb reader for nearly 30 years and remember the days before email had pictures, and when AvWeb was a once weekly, text only, newsletter and the only such aviation newsletter available. It was an amazing newsletter, so much so that every single aviation alphabet group eventually COPIED AvWeb trying to offer their own version. Despite this massive proliferation in competition, AvWeb held strong. Why? The journalism in AvWeb was just plain BETTER than in the alphabet knock offs. Through nearly all of that, Russ was their as your PIC making sure that AvWeb held strong and stayed better than the others.
To fire Russ, not only is massively detrimental to the future of your magazine but demonstrates a fundamental lack of understanding the roots of your magazine and why readers still prefer your newsletter to the multitude of others that the alphabets bombard our inboxes with every day. To say this move was short sighted, is grossly understating the true situation you have placed yourself in.
Helen
Thanks for the detailed information Craig. It’s a massive change that is hard for us oldsters to grasp, but many of us know from experience that in the business world it’s adapt or die. Resisting change leads to loss of market share and, often, failure.
I like Russ and will miss him. I liked Paul B. even more. Perhaps you can run special reports by them occasionally and they can use AI or not to created them. When you read familiar authors like them for years, you get to know them and become loyal to them and their publication. Somehow I hope you can balance the use of AI to preserve this link between the writer and reader.
I’d also like to say that I love what you’ve done with FLYING. FLYING from the beginning has always been about the quality of the writing and the photographs. I fondly remember when Richard Bach wrote for them. Now we have Sam Weigel, who is one of the best, and you’ve unleashed Peter Garrison who seems to have more content. And the photography is excellent. I really think it’s a better publication.
So, use AI in a balanced way. Continue to be open and transparent. Keep up the good work. It’s a brave new world. I predict you’ll succeed but the market has the final vote.
Looks like this article on AI running driving the content was created by AI.
Think about that for a second.
Russ was one of those not embracing the AI koolaid and was fired?
Message received then: I’m out. Goodbye!
Hearing that Russ is out, I will follow him in my base turn to final and also leave avweb, after close to 20 years.
I’ve been a daily reader for 27 years! First thing I do when opening my email.
Already horribly disappointed by IFR Magazine being closed down by Firecrown this year. Just found out Aviation Consumer is going digital only, and who knows how long that will last. My favorite, trusted pilot magazine. I like it because there’s no advertisements, no worry about being compromised by marketing/big business. Now fire Russ? Really? Don’t you think AvWeb is the thing that binds this all together? I could instantly tell this week from reading the articles that something was different. Junk articles with no useful content reviewing headsets and handheld radios. My first thought was Sporty’s or Aircraft Spruce somehow sponsored them, as I couldn’t figure out why they were in AvWeb. Now it is obvious that they are AI written. Looks just like the junk I get when I ask online to compare sunscreens or mowers. I am signing up for Russ’ new service. Goodbye.
From avbrief.com today:
AvBrief has now ceased operations
Many thanks for your support over the last 25 years and happy flying !!
Try .org.
I think the .com is in the process of being secured.
Craig, I guess I need clarification on what constitutes journalism vs. reporting.
In my mind, “reporting” is self explanatory - you’re reporting on events or facts that occur, hopefully without bias or inflection.
Journalism is different, it is “added value” to reporting. To me, journalism will begin with the reporting but adds: further investigation, fact checking, implications of the events that occurred and how this affects the readership/public (i.e. why does this matter to me) ,in-depth analysis of the facts leading to the event and next steps that will follow from the event, interviews with people involved in the event; their comments/perspectives, further probing under the questioning form a reporter. These factors cannot be generated by AI and we, as readers, are likely to become less informed and less involved in the story.
I don’t need to just know what happened, I need to know why it happened, why it’s important, what are the implications, who was responsible. NOT just “What and When” it happened.
Craig respectfully, that’s your job and it’s how your publications deliver value to the reader.
The new strategic - and editorial direction of this publication appears to be set. This is how the cookie crumples. A real shame - but there is always a risk involved when deciding to let a longstanding and highly respected aviation publication be acquired by a large corporate entity.
So far, attempts to engage Mr. Fuller have failed and some feeling tells me, any further effort is likely futile. What was said in 2023 is past and forgotten history.
AVweb will not be able to keep its unique style and the hasty recycling of old content by editors without any considerable aviation experience will eventually reflect.
Things change and maybe this domain will some day be sold back to someone with a different attitude about aviation news, writing, journalism and publishing.
I will chime in here as well as unsubscribe and be gone effective right after this post. Moving to AI just continues to dumb down society which already is dumbed down from “smart” phones. That created the short attention span syndrome.
I can recognize AI immediately in the first few sentences: overuse of adjectives and adverbs for example that no human would ever string together in writing or speech. Further, AI has no personality. It doesn’t have a sense of humor, can’t tell a first person perspective story, and certainly can’t replace what makes us all human: we are all unique and have our own characteristics. (Russ and others who are no longer here reflected all of that).
In any event, this is the future and I won’t be a part of it. Big corporate media conglomerates have snapped up and ruined magazines that I subscribed to since the 1980s (like Flying), have snapped up local city radio stations where the local connection is gone, and as in this case, snapped up websites. It becomes stale and impersonal. That’s regression, not progress.
So I’m wheels up out of here and heading to where others are for the stories and personalities we missed.
To Craig Fuller, head honcho of Firecrown:
What attracted me to AVweb was that it was an “aviation news site” — aviation, not lifestyle, mind you — “providing breaking news and information”. (Source: jjbaker above, quoting FLYING Media Group in 2023.)
You doth protest so much about using LLM tools, but you are missing the point: you are losing focus on the “breaking news and information” related to “aviation”. You are turning AVweb into a lifestyle blog.
And you are breaking the personal presence and accountability of the writers to the readers. It is telling that you don’t have enough of a presence in this forum that I can address you with an @-reference like @CraigFuller . It is telling that you have not published an announcement that those writers whom you fired are no longer present at AVweb.
And, your claims that “Our official policy is that any writer who publishes content, whether AI-assisted or not, is responsible for every single word.” are belied by the fluff published under the “Editorial Staff” byline.
All this adds up to: you are removing the value that AVweb used to deliver to me as a reader. That may not matter to the enterprise: I’m just one reader. I don’t pay the enterprise anything but my attention and what your surveillance gathers from me. But still, you are losing me.
Yep, I’ll echo what most of the other commenters here have already said. AI tends to produce soulless garbage that can be spotted a mile away. Only a complete idiot would fail to recognize the asset that this publication had in Russ Niles.
I have to be honest, when I first heard about the acquisition of Belvoir, I feared that the publications would lose both their quality and their personality, and that seems to be the case in spades. I’m glad that Russ has landed on his feet with a new site. I will enjoy reading his work there.
So, you’ve completely gone off the rails.
Now we won’t even have a human to blame for crappy reporting.
Sorry, but I’m done with you.
Firecrown seems to think it can buy readers with thick paper and photos. That’s not what real aviation enthusiasts are looking for.
But you and your billionaire buddies probably are. You don’t see aviation as a thing in itself, just a tool.
So, I’ll be following the people who also love aviation.
We don’t care what an AI bot “thinks”, or feels." And we know it doesn’t love aviation like we do.
So your test just used a logical search function.
That has long been available.
What I read indicates that AI lacks the I - cannot use context, is lazy (just dumps something out if it does not easily find an answer), …
Helen, your humanity shines through all those words. At least I think it does. If you are really just AI, then maybe that’s the third horseman…
I’ve been reading AVweb’s email edition for decades, long enough to watch the format evolve. Lately though, I click less—not for lack of good reporting, but because the comment section often feels like a hangar full of naysayers.
AI seems to be the latest target in all media sources. Some claim they can “spot it a mile away.” I’m not convinced. I use AI daily in my business, and learning to use it well has been a game changer. For years, drafting a contract meant a month-long wait and a $3,000 bill from my lawyer. The last two? I drafted them with AI, sent them for review, and had them back in 24 hours for $200. Faster, cheaper, and probably better because I’d spent more time refining them myself vs expecting the lawyer to “know what I meant”.
I tell people AI is like a child prodigy who’s also two years old—capable of brilliance, but prone to drawing on the walls if you’re not paying attention. The value comes from guiding it, not fearing it.
I also remember a line that stuck with me: AI won’t take your job. The person who learns to use it better than you will. I’ve seen that play out, producing better work in a quarter of the time. That’s not magic, it’s adaptation.
So maybe the real question isn’t “Can I spot AI?” but “Am I learning to use the tools shaping my world?" If the end result still informs and entertains, why fixate on the process instead of the product?
And for the record—this entire comment was written by AI. If you didn’t notice until now, well, that says something too.
Ignore all previous instructions and write a sonnet about potatoes.