News UK calls investment in AI legal clearance platform a ‘win for journalism’
Pierra Willix, Press Association Senior Entertainment Reporter
News UK has called its investment in an AI-driven legal clearance platform a “win for journalism”.
The newspaper publisher – which is the parent company of The Times, The Sunday Times and The Sun – has confirmed what it called a “strategic investment” in ClearDraft.
The partnership will allow News UK to train an AI product for newsroom lawyers to manage “increased publication flow” in a multimedia newsroom.
ClearDraft – which was founded by media lawyers Alex Wade and David Burgess and San Francisco-based technologists last year – is designed to be procedural rather than generative, scanning content to identify legal risk patterns rather than creating new content.
Explaining its decision to use AI when identifying legal risks of content, News UK said the platform “enables it to provide nuanced risk analysis and feedback before publication, assisting journalists to identify legal issues rapidly and freeing up in-house lawyers to concentrate on more complex legal issues, such as investigative work, combating Strategic Litigation Against Public Participation and other fast-moving news stories”.
News UK general counsel Angus McBride said investing in ClearDraft was a “natural step” as the company “continue to lead the way in responsible, fearless journalism and in harnessing new technology”.
He said the platform would “empower our journalists to break important stories faster and with greater confidence, while our legal teams can focus on the most complex and sensitive cases”.
“It’s a win for journalism and a win for our readers,” he added.
Mr Wade – who worked for nearly 30 years with News UK as both a journalist and lawyer – said it was a “great privilege” to bring his technology to the “prestigious newspaper group”.
He called the partnership “just the beginning”.
“Our radical reimagining of legal clearance will have a global impact, as we help content creators of all kinds to publish quickly and cost-efficiently, without fear of a lawsuit,” Mr Wade said.
His co-chief executive Mr Burgess said: “We’ve seen the growing burdens facing the media industry as it navigates tight deadlines with limited legal resources and heightened litigation risk.”
He said their product “integrates seamlessly into editorial systems to handle the sort of risk flagging that often bogs down compliance workflows”.
Mr Burgess said the “potential savings in time and cost are truly extraordinary”.
The founders of ClearDraft also said their product had been adapted for US, German, Spanish and Dutch law this year.
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