Jilin Daily puts “AI” byline on literary essay in Party newspaper

Jilin Daily, the official newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party’s Jilin Provincial Committee, published an autumn essay on page seven on Oct. 12 with an unusual byline: “AI.” The piece, titled “Autumn Food Notes,” appeared in the Literary Teahouse section of the Northeast Wind supplement and reflected on seasonal food and imagery including red hawthorn fruit and crabapples. The AI credit drew broad discussion in media circles during the week of publication. Commentators cited by China Media Project described it as potentially breaking new ground, arguing that AI had long been used behind the scenes in traditional newsrooms but had now been visibly credited in a Party newspaper. The paper framed the publication as part of a reader competition. Northeast Wind began accepting entries in August for “Autumn Letters from the Human World,” a contest designed to put reader-submitted prose, essays and poetry alongside AI-generated writing. Selected work was to appear in Jilin Daily’s supplement pages. The call recommended entries of about 1,000 Chinese characters and required them to be original, unpublished and free from plagiarism. Contributors were asked to provide their real names and telephone numbers. The editorial department did not publicly disclose which model generated “Autumn Food Notes.” The AI article was printed beside autumn writing credited to human contributors, though accounts differ on the specific companion piece. The Paper identified Sun Yu’s “Written to Autumn,” while China Media Project named Sun Yuping’s “An Autumn Fragment at Zhagan Lake.” The placement was notable because Party newspapers are published by local and regional Communist Party committees and are commonly regarded as the Party’s “throat and tongue.” Their contributors are generally staff writers or government departments using specialized bylines. Literary Teahouse, however, is a longstanding cultural section that normally carries essays, reading notes, historical and cultural sketches, local-interest writing and short reflections from writers, literature enthusiasts and newspaper editors. The experiment sits within a wider journalistic push to test readers’ responses to machine-written prose. The New York Times in March presented paired human and AI short texts for readers to compare, while Columbia Journalism Review ran a similar comparison of ChatGPT-produced and published news leads in 2025. It also came as Chinese rules require AI-generated text and other virtual content to carry both visible labels and embedded identifiers such as metadata watermarks. The regulation reflects concerns about misinformation, copyright infringement and online fraud. Jilin Daily’s conspicuous “AI” byline provided a visible disclosure. The “Autumn Letters from the Human World” call for submissions remains open through Oct. 31.