AI is rapidly transforming journalism, but the extent of its use in published newspaper articles remains unclear. We address this gap by auditing a large-scale dataset of 186K articles from online editions of 1.5K American newspapers published in the summer of 2025. Using Pangram, a state-of-the-art AI detector, we discover that approximately 9% of newly-published articles are either partially or fully AI-generated. This AI use is unevenly distributed, appearing more frequently in smaller, local outlets, in specific topics such as weather and technology, and within certain ownership groups. We also analyze 45K opinion pieces from Washington Post, New York Times, and Wall Street Journal, finding that they are 6.4 times more likely to contain AI-generated content than news articles from the same publications, with many AI-flagged op-eds authored by prominent public figures. Despite this prevalence, we find that AI use is rarely disclosed: a manual audit of 100 AI-flagged articles found only five disclosures of AI use. Overall, our audit highlights the immediate need for greater transparency and updated editorial standards regarding the use of AI in journalism to maintain public trust.

翻译：人工智能正在迅速改变新闻业，但其在已发表报纸文章中的使用程度仍不明确。为填补这一空白，我们审计了一个大规模数据集，包含2025年夏季1,500家美国报纸在线版发布的18.6万篇文章。通过使用最先进的AI检测工具Pangram，我们发现约9%的新发表文章部分或完全由AI生成。这种AI应用分布不均，更频繁地出现在规模较小的本地媒体、特定主题（如天气和科技）以及某些所有权集团中。我们还分析了《华盛顿邮报》、《纽约时报》和《华尔街日报》的4.5万篇评论文章，发现其包含AI生成内容的可能性是同一出版物新闻文章的6.4倍，且许多被标记为AI生成的评论文章由知名公众人物撰写。尽管AI应用普遍存在，但我们发现其使用鲜少被披露：对100篇被标记为AI生成的文章进行人工审计，仅发现五篇披露了AI使用情况。总体而言，我们的审计强调，为维护公众信任，新闻业迫切需要就AI使用提高透明度并更新编辑标准。