CNET's AI Policy

With proper guardrails, new tools can assist us in producing expert, unique and helpful advice.

Published June 2023 | Updated October 2025

Key Takeaways:

* CNET does not use generative AI to write content for our site or its platforms. Our words are human-written.

* As a team, we may use AI tools to help us with tasks like transcription or note-taking, but never to generate advice, reporting or recommendations.

* In all cases, we have rules in place to ensure high editorial standards, trustworthy recommendations and proper sourcing.

CNET is proud to be powered by creative, hands-on experts who use new tools thoughtfully and ethically. We use clear, bold disclosures and this policy page to share our practices surrounding the use of AI in content.

CNET does not use generative artificial intelligence to create text, images or videos on our site or its platforms, except as examples of AI capabilities in coverage of tools on the market, such as in our reviews of chatbots and image generators, or in some basic image-editing processes. Our content is always written and edited by humans to ensure high editorial standards and the genuine perspective of people like you.

At the same time, we're tech journalists who embrace the future, so we're always evaluating new approaches. For example, CNET staff photographers and video producers are experimenting with the use of generative AI to assist us in creating conceptual illustrations in our stories and videos. We'll let you know if and when we decide to formalize this practice, and we will always label AI-generated content.

In the past, we've used AI assists on a small number of stories. For example, this guide to the best internet service providers in Bismarck, North Dakota, is one of 34 articles on CNET (a tiny fraction of the 10,000-plus new stories we produce each year) that used RAMP, an in-house AI tool, to gather speed, pricing and availability information from a proprietary database. A staff writer reviewed, fact-checked and added subject matter expertise to the AI's drafted content, which was trained on CNET's archive. We've noted this next to the byline with the phrase "Assisted by AI." We have not published any new RAMP-assisted work since 2023.

CNET's standard for evaluating potential use of AI in content includes three tenets:

One, the content we publish is factual, original and edited by a human, whether it's created by a human alone or assisted by an AI tool. (Reminder: Currently, only content evaluating generative AI tools uses generative AI.)

Two, if any future CNET stories or pages feature text that originated from AI tools, we'll include that information in a disclosure -- specifically, in a secondary byline at the top of the story. Any images that contain AI-generated portions would be labeled as such in the credit field.

Three, authors and creators are always credited for their work. The use of any AI tools we may test or adopt will include staff training on processes that prioritize accurate sourcing and meet our standards of citation.

Here are situations where we won't be using AI:

Writing stories: None of the stories on CNET have been or will be completely written by an AI.

Product testing: We're not using AI tools to do any of the hands-on, product-based testing that informs our reviews and ratings -- except in cases where we're reviewing and rating AI tools themselves and need to generate examples of their output, as we do within AI Atlas, our compendium of AI news and information. All CNET reviews are performed by our trusted, experienced and award-winning human experts, many of whom have a decade or more of experience with the tech they review. See here for more information about how we test everything.

A couple more things we think you should know:

* This policy applies to work produced by CNET's editorial team. Content produced by external advertising partners or third-party business partners is not subject to our editorial policies.

* Ziff Davis, CNET's parent company, in April filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in training and operating its AI systems. We disclose this fact in any CNET stories that substantively deal with OpenAI or its products; it does not impact our coverage.

We're continuing to test AI tools and we expect that the future will bring many new ways to use them. We'll use this page to let you know about our progress.