# The AI writing taboo begins to fade following WSJ op-ed — retained record

> Retained news record from news:semafor.

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source: [news](https://highsignal.app/data/news) (news:semafor)  published 2026-08-26 17:39 ingested 2026-08-26 20:22

[original source ↗](https://www.semafor.com/article/08/26/2026/the-ai-writing-taboo-begins-to-fade-after-wsj-op-ed)

## retained text



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The stigma against using AI for writing appears to be wearing off. In what Semafor’s media editor called a “precedent-setting moment,” The Wall Street Journal not only acknowledged that billionaire investor Stanley Druckenmiller used AI for a newsmaking op-ed, but defended the practice: “AI is a fact of modern life,” the Journal’s opinion editor said in a statement, adding that the paper cares more about whether an essay reflects the author’s genuine opinion.
Newspaper op-eds from big names have long been ghostwritten by junior staffers or outside PR firms — no disclosure necessary, and often watered down and hyper-optimized to be as palatable as possible. In that sense, outsourcing to AI is just replacing one form of slop with another. Just look at LinkedIn, where many cringe human-generated posts have been replaced by AI. (And people do appear to care: The site’s new “Seems like AI slop” button has been clicked more than a million times.)
Still, none of this means the Claude-ian prose is any good, or that publications like the Journal shouldn’t disclose when AI is substantively used in an article. The second-most important opinion page in the US should be more than a meat proxy.
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document fetched 2026-08-27 13:04 · canonical https://semafor.com/article/08/26/2026/the-ai-writing-taboo-begins-to-fade-after-wsj-op-ed