AI-generated summaries of local meetings are spreading in San Mateo County
News organizations in San Mateo County are experimenting with AI tools to summarize city council meetings, water district hearings, and other government proceedings. The technology is not yet widespread, but it's moving beyond the testing phase.
Coastside News Group launched a tool called Coastie, built by a company called Locunity, that produces article-length summaries of agency meetings complete with quoted remarks. Citizen Portal AI, founded by the creator of Ancestry.com, operates a subscription service covering roughly 18,000 municipalities, including Foster City.
These tools aim to expand coverage of meetings that local journalists cannot attend. "Journalists can't get to everything," said Thomas Dyches, general manager of Citizen Portal. "What I hope is, local journalists use us as a source."
Human verification remains inconsistent
The question of accuracy separates the approaches. Citizen Portal produces up to 24,000 articles daily, with transcripts ranging from 90% to 100% accurate. Coastside News Group has a copy editor review names in Coastie stories, though this doesn't constitute a full accuracy check.
Djordje Padejski, associate director of Stanford University's John Knight Journalism Fellowships, said newsrooms succeeding with AI use it as a backend tool for human journalists-analyzing data, summarizing meetings, or flagging updates. "Any product that comes out without a pure human check, human verification, human in the loop, are really set to fail," he said.
The tension is fundamental. "For computer scientists, 80% or even higher accuracy rate for AI tools is unbelievable accomplishment," Padejski said. "But in journalism … we don't tolerate 80% accuracy."
Audiences distrust fully automated content
Research shows readers reject fully automated articles without human fact-checking, even as an estimated 50% of internet articles are now primarily AI-generated. This gap matters for news organizations deciding whether to adopt the technology.
Hoodline, which aggregates reporting on San Mateo County, publishes AI-written stories under disclosed "reporter" names. The organization says it uses "carefully tailored AI tools" alongside human editors to maintain journalistic standards.
As AI for Writers tools become more common, the role of human journalists may shift toward managing and verifying AI output rather than replacing it entirely. Padejski said accountability will remain a human responsibility. "I still believe in humanity," he said. "There's going to be still need for humans to take those AI tools accountable."
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