FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: May 22, 2026

Media Contacts:
Kathleen Floyd, WBNG Communications — [email protected]
PEN Guild — [email protected]

WASHINGTON– The POLITICO and E&E News Guild (PEN Guild) members have earned a resounding final victory in one of the most significant labor-AI disputes in American journalism: following months of negotiations between PEN Guild leadership, the Washington-Baltimore News Guild (WBNG), and POLITICO management, the company has agreed to shut down both artificial intelligence products at the heart of last November’s landmark arbitration ruling.

POLITICO will shut down Capitol AI Report-Builder, a tool that produced branded policy reports for POLITICO Pro subscribers without any editorial review, despite generating glaring factual errors. It also will not revive the “Live Summaries” AI feature, which generated error-riddled unedited coverage of major political events, including the 2024 Democratic National Convention and Vice Presidential Debate. Both uses were found by an arbitrator in November 2025 to have violated PEN Guild’s collective bargaining agreement.

“This is an extraordinary win not just for our members, but for everyone who believes journalism must remain in human hands,” said Ariel Wittenberg, PEN Guild chair. “We refused to back down, and POLITICO heard us loud and clear that these tools do not belong in our newsroom.”

The remedy is the culmination of a process that began when PEN Guild first filed grievances in August 2024 over POLITICO’s unilateral deployment of the two AI products without the 60-day notice, good-faith bargaining, or human oversight required under the contract. After management failed to resolve those grievances, the Guild escalated to arbitration. The arbitrator sided decisively with the Guild in a ruling issued November 26, 2025, finding that POLITICO had violated its collective bargaining agreement and that, in the words of the arbitrator himself: “If accuracy and accountability is the baseline, then AI, as used in these instances, cannot yet rival the hallmarks of human output.”

Since that ruling, PEN Guild leaders, WBNG representatives, and POLITICO management met repeatedly to negotiate a remedy. That process has concluded with the most powerful outcome possible: neither product will be available again.

“AI tools may be new, but the legal principles we secured in the agreement are not: management must provide notice, bargain with the union, and ensure that innovation does not come at the expense of workers’ rights or diminish their work,” said Amos Laor, WBNG General Counsel. “We won the arbitration, and then we won the remedy. This is what it looks like when workers hold the line –it sends a message to every media company in the country that AI cannot be used to circumvent union contracts or undermine journalistic integrity.”

The arbitration case was one of the first major labor rulings in the United States to address the impact of AI on journalists’ work. PEN Guild’s contract, ratified in 2024 and among the first in the media industry to include enforceable AI protections, required POLITICO to give the Guild advance notice and the opportunity to bargain before deploying new AI tools that could impact job duties, and ensure human oversight and compliance with journalistic ethics standards. POLITICO bypassed those protections twice through its use of the live summaries and the Capitol AI Report-Builder.

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ABOUT THE PEN GUILD

The POLITICO and E&E News (PEN) Guild represents over 225 journalists across POLITICO and E&E News. Formed in 2021, the PEN Guild is part of the Washington-Baltimore News Guild, Local 32035 of The NewsGuild-CWA. The unit ratified its first contract in 2024, securing significant wins including strong AI protections, guaranteed raises, improved salary floors, paid parental leave, fertility and IVF coverage, comp time and overtime guarantees, and key safeguards for equitable and ethical journalism.

ABOUT THE WASHINGTON-BALTIMORE NEWS GUILD

The Washington-Baltimore News Guild, Local 32035 of The NewsGuild-Communications Workers of America, the union for more than 3,000 news, information, nonprofit and labor organization workers in the mid-Atlantic and beyond, including the Washington Post, Environmental Defense Fund, AFL-CIO, POLITICO and the American Nurses Association (ANA). Together, we hold our employers accountable and ensure that our workplaces reflect our values, which include ensuring everyone is free from harassment and retaliation, earns equal pay for equal work and has a voice in their workplace.