If you arrived here from the line at the bottom of a brief, this is how that brief was written.

The New Jersey Tide uses AI to write short news briefs from press releases published by public agencies at the Jersey Shore: the county prosecutors’ offices in Monmouth, Ocean, Atlantic and Cape May counties, the New Jersey Attorney General’s office, the New Jersey State Police, county governments, and the City of Atlantic City. The system reads the public announcement and summarizes it. Every brief runs under the byline “Tide Bot” and carries a line at the bottom saying how it was made.

A brief is a summary of a single public document. It attributes what it reports to the agency that issued it and never states a contested fact in our own voice. Where someone has been charged rather than convicted, it says that the charges are accusations and that the person is presumed innocent. It adds no interviews, no outside reporting and no opinion.

What the system will not write

Some releases are set aside before anything is drafted. A fixed set of rules — the kill-list — refuses releases about sexual assault, human trafficking or the sexual abuse of children; cases involving a minor; suicide or self-harm; a search for a suspect who is still at large; and shootings by police or deaths following an encounter with police. Those stories need a reporter’s judgment rather than a summary, and the Tide does not have reporters. Routine speeding stops are left out as well. An editor can overrule the list for a single release; when that happens, the decision is recorded under the editor’s name.

The other checks

Several agencies often announce the same case. When a brief is drafted, the desk checks it against the stories already published on the site, and a brief that repeats one is held back and marked for an editor. The drafting system also lists anything in its draft that it wants a person to check.

Who reads a brief before it publishes

For now, every brief is saved as a draft, and an editor reads it before it is published. If the Tide begins publishing briefs automatically, without an editor reading them first, this page will say so.

Corrections

If a brief is wrong, tell us and we will correct it on the page. Write to news@newjerseytide.com and say which brief and what is wrong with it. A machine drafted it; the responsibility for it is entirely ours.