New Washington Post AI tool sifts massive data sets

The Washington Post recently published its first-ever story built on the work of a new AI tool called Haystacker that allows journalists to sift through large data sets—video, photo or text—to find newsworthy trends or patterns. The Post's chief technology officer, Vineet Khosla, said the company is committed to building many AI tools in house because they can address the specific needs of trained journalists. That ethos is reminiscent of the Post's efforts to build an in-house content management system nearly a decade ago called ArcXP that serves the special needs of news publishers. Asked whether the Post would ever license Haystacker to other newsrooms, Khosla said that's not the company's focus right now. This is the third major AI tool the Post has debuted in the past few months. In July it launched an AI-driven chatbot on its site that responds to user queries about climate with answers pulled from Post articles. It also debuted a new article summary product that summarizes a given article using generative AI.