PlayNY covers New York’s legal online sportsbooks and the wider New York gambling market for readers who are about to spend their own money. That raises the bar on everything we publish, and it is why we are putting in writing how artificial intelligence does and does not factor into our work. Every operator we cover is licensed by the New York State Gaming Commission, and we check our licensing claims against the Commission’s own records rather than an operator’s marketing.
The short version: AI is a tool our editorial staff use, the way they use a spreadsheet, a style guide, or a search engine. It does not report, it does not test, it does not form opinions, and it does not publish. Every page on this site is written and reviewed by named members of our editorial team, and their names are on it.
Because the work differs by content type, this policy is broken into three parts: our news desk, our evergreen guides, and our reviews. Each one sets out what AI helps us do and what AI will never do for us.
1. Our news desk
Experienced journalists drive our news coverage from start to finish. AI serves as a supporting tool, while reporting, analysis, and editorial decisions stay in human hands.
What AI helps us do
- Automate routine newsroom tasks so our journalists can dedicate more time to reporting and analysis.
- Monitor industry developments and identify potential stories for editorial review.
- Organize and interpret large datasets that support our coverage.
- Assist with background research and help pinpoint areas that need further investigation.
- Surface credible sources and unique angles that can strengthen reporting.
- Provide an additional review for grammar, spelling, and factual consistency after editorial editing.
Cons
- Publish content without review and approval from a human editor.
- Replace the expertise, judgment, or experience of our writers and editors.
- Serve as anything more than a supporting tool within our editorial process.
“AI is another tool to help us cover the online gambling industry more expansively and effectively without losing that human expertise, experience, and trust. It aids editors and writers with basic tasks while freeing them to focus on more authoritative and expansive news stories they might otherwise be unable to produce. When you look at an editor’s or writer’s tool belt, AI is the newest piece of equipment.”
2. Our evergreen guides
Our evergreen pages are the explainers, how-to guides, and reference pages readers come back to: how deposits and withdrawals work, what a bonus actually pays out, which operators hold a New York license, and how prediction markets differ from sportsbooks. These pages change constantly, because the industry does.
What AI helps us do
- Accelerate research and fact-verification processes.
- Keep promotions, odds boosts, and other frequently changing information up to date.
- Organize and analyze large datasets to uncover meaningful trends and insights.
- Identify outdated, inaccurate, or inconsistent information from operators and platforms.
- Make complex betting and prediction market topics easier for readers to understand.
What AI will never do for us
- Publish content without human review and approval.
- Replace our hands-on testing of sportsbooks and prediction markets.
- Make final decisions on ratings, reviews, or recommendations.
- Override the editorial standards and human judgment that guide our coverage.
“The challenge with regional gaming sites is that every state is different, and regulations, promotions, and operator offerings can change quickly. AI helps us process large amounts of information faster, but every update is reviewed through an editor’s lens to ensure it’s accurate, relevant, and useful to readers.”
3. Our reviews
Every PlayNY review is built on first-hand testing. A member of our team registers the account, makes the deposit, places bets, and requests the withdrawal. The ratings you see come out of our own scoring formulas, run against that testing data. AI helps us organize and process what our testers collect. It never substitutes for the testing itself.
What AI helps us do
- Process and organize large volumes of testing data collected during our reviews.
- Identify potential gaps or inconsistencies in our testing workflows.
- Identify minor spelling, grammar, and formatting issues after editorial review.
- Perform the calculations that power our review and rating methodology.
- Confirm basic public information, such as corporate details and terms-and-conditions pages.
- Standardize screenshots and visual assets for publication.
What AI will never do for us
- Create, alter, or fabricate testing results.
- Influence how sportsbooks or prediction markets are ranked.
- Make editorial decisions reserved for our review team.
- Replace first-hand testing with information sourced from the web.
- Override the proprietary formulas at the foundation of our testing procedure.
“AI helps us manage and organize large amounts of testing data, but it only works because real people collect that data first. Our reviewers are the ones opening accounts, testing features, and evaluating the player experience. AI can sort information in a spreadsheet, but it can’t tell you what it’s actually like to play at an online casino.”
4. Where you will find our AI explainer
We do not think a policy page on its own is enough. You should be able to see how this applies to the specific page you are reading, at the moment you are reading it.
Every article on PlayNY carries a byline naming the writer or the PlayNY editorial team, the editor or fact-checker, and the date the page was last updated. Alongside those, you will find an expandable AI panel. Open it and it tells you which of the uses described on this page applied to that article, and it links back here.
Corrections
We get things wrong sometimes, and we would rather hear about it than not. If something on PlayNY is inaccurate or out of date, email [email protected]. A human reads every message sent to that address.
Third-party content
This policy covers content produced by the PlayNY editorial team. It does not cover material supplied by operators, advertisers, or other third parties that appears on this site, and we cannot speak to how those companies use AI in their own work.
This policy will change
These tools are moving quickly and our use of them will move with them. When it does, we will update this page and change the date at the top. The commitments in the “what AI will never do” sections are the part we do not expect to revise.
The people behind our content
If you want to know more about our team and what we do, check our About Us page.
