Italian newspaper says it has published world’s first AI-generated edition

An Italian newspaper has said it is the first in the world to publish an edition entirely produced by artificial intelligence.

The initiative by Il Foglio, a conservative liberal daily, is part of a month-long journalistic experiment aimed at showing the impact AI technology has “on our way of working and our days”, the newspaper’s founder, Giuliano Ferrara, said.

The four-page Il Foglio AI has been wrapped into the newspaper’s slim broadsheet edition, and is available on newsstands and online from Tuesday.

“It will be the first daily newspaper in the world on newsstands created entirely using artificial intelligence,” said Ferrara. “For everything. For the writing, the headlines, the quotes, the summaries. And, sometimes, even for the irony.” He added that journalists’ role would be limited to “asking questions [into an AI tool] and reading the answers”.

The experiment comes as news organisations around the world grapple with how AI should be deployed. Earlier this month, the Guardian reported that BBC News will use AI to give the public more personalised content.

The front page of the first edition of Il Foglio AI carries a story referring to the US president, Donald Trump, describing the “paradox of Italian Trumpians” and how they rail against “cancel culture” yet either turn a blind eye, or worse, “celebrate” when “their idol in the US behaves like the despot of a banana republic”.

The front page also features a column headlined, “Putin, the 10 betrayals”, with the article highlighting “20 years of broken promises, torn-up agreements and words betrayed” by Vladimir Putin, the Russian president.

On page 2 is a story about “situationships” and how young Europeans are fleeing steady relationships.

The final page runs AI-generated letters from readers to the editor, with one asking whether AI will render humans “useless” in the future. “AI is a great innovation, but it doesn’t yet know how to order a coffee without getting the sugar wrong”, reads the AI-generated response.

Ferrara said Il Foglio AI reflects “a real newspaper” and is the product of “news, debate and provocations”. But it is also a testing ground to show how AI could work “in practice” while seeing what the impact will be on producing a daily newspaper with the technology and the questions “we are forced to ask ourselves, not only from a journalistic nature”.

“It is just another [Il] Foglio made with intelligence, don’t call it artificial,” Ferrara said.