AsAmNews pilots WhatsApp election service built on trusted local reporting
Cartoon · AI-generated
Readers can text or WhatsApp election questions to AsAmNews and receive answers drawn from its own reporting and selected partner outlets, with human oversight.
AsAmNews has launched a pilot service that lets readers text or WhatsApp election questions to 347-252-9070, in an attempt to make its reporting easier to reach during a busy campaign season. The newsroom says the answers are drawn from its own coverage and from reporting by selected partner outlets serving communities of colour, rather than from the open web.
The initiative is being presented as an addition to, not a substitute for, regular reporting. AsAmNews says the aim is to give readers another way into its election coverage while preserving editorial judgement and human oversight. The newsroom also says it expects some questions to go unanswered and is inviting feedback on what the experiment does well, where it falls short and how it might be improved.
Behind the service is a retrieval-augmented generation system built by Meedan, the non-profit technology organisation that works on journalism, digital literacy and access to reliable information. Meedan’s own materials describe a wider set of tools, including Suwali, an AI chatbot designed to help newsrooms and civil society groups answer questions using their own trusted content. The organisation says its approach is built around transparency and public-interest use rather than replacing journalists with automated output.
AsAmNews is partnering on the project with URL Media, Documented, The Electorate, The Oklahoma Eagle, Native News Online, India Currents and Epicenter NYC. The newsroom says every response is attributed to the outlet from which it was sourced, and stresses that the service is not intended to compete with consumer AI products such as ChatGPT, Gemini or Claude. Instead, it is being framed as another point of contact between voters and verified reporting at a moment when many newsrooms are trying to meet audiences where they already communicate.
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Source: Noah Wire Services · Original