How We Use AI
Human Story Experiment is a publication built on a bet that the stories of actual humans, told by other humans who sat with them long enough to get it right, are worth the trouble of making. That bet would collapse if we used AI to write the stories. So we don't. Here is what we do use it for.
The Human Story Experiment is a publication built on a simple bet: that the stories of actual humans, told by other humans who sat with them long enough to get it right, are worth the trouble of making. That bet would collapse if we used AI to write the stories. So we don't.
What follows is what we do use AI for, and where the line is.
What AI does here
We use AI for platform work. The editorial frameworks. The About page you may have just read. Headlines and search-engine descriptions. Copy editing on the margins. Building the website itself. Thinking through structural problems with the publication when we get stuck.
When a curator pitches a subject, AI can help us think about whether the angle holds, whether the subject is interesting beyond a particular community, whether the piece will work better as a Q&A or a long-form feature. We use it like a thoughtful colleague who reads widely and never gets tired.
When we are stuck on a headline, we ask. When we need a content brief for a subject we want a curator to consider, we ask. When the About page reads like generic template boilerplate, we get help replacing it with something true.
What AI does not do here
Write stories. Conduct interviews. Generate quotes. Invent details about real humans. Replace photographs. Sit in for a curator's voice.
Every published story is the work of a real curator who sat with a real subject. The interview happens. The piece is written by the curator. The subject sees it before it publishes and can ask for changes or pull out entirely. The byline names a real human who is editorially responsible for the work. There is no AI co-credit on stories, no quiet substitution of AI prose for curator prose, no AI-generated subject photography.
Curators are welcome to use AI the same way a writer might use a word processor or a research database: to brainstorm a headline, to copy edit a draft, to outline before writing. What they may not do is hand AI the interview, the prose, the facts, or the voice of the subject.
Why disclose this at all
Because the publication's premise depends on the answer being clear. If a reader cannot trust that the people in these stories are real, that the curator who wrote about them actually talked to them, that the photographs were taken by a person who showed up at the place, then nothing about Human Story Experiment is worth the time.
We think the honest answer is more interesting than the convenient one. Most publications are using AI somewhere in their stack right now, and very few are saying so. That silence is going to become a problem. We would rather be on the record from the start.
This publication is a small bet on close attention to one human at a time. AI helps us build the conditions for that to happen. It does not stand in for the humans, on either side of the conversation.
The Editors
