Social conflict at “Le Point”: “I don’t see an AI that could do my job”

The social plan fell upon them one April morning. "No feelings, we're being fired," say Claude, Dominique, and Sacha (1), members of the revision and corrections department of Le Point . 52 jobs have been cut in the weekly's editorial office, including their entire department, 18 positions. In their place? Management wants to rely partly on artificial intelligence. The reorganization, desired by the newspaper's director Etienne Gernelle – and described internally as an upgrade to counter sagging sales, according to him – is being carried out at a rapid pace. "But no member of the hierarchy has yet come to detail it to us; they themselves seem to be in the fog," laments Sacha.

"We have the impression that our management really doesn't know the reality of our profession," adds Dominique. The meticulous work of the editor-reviser thus includes spelling, grammar and typographic correction, verification of information, and analysis of style, to avoid heaviness, repetitions or inconsistencies, or to alert if the article is too far from the editorial line of Le Point . "We have the reader's eye," explains Dominique. " We sense when the message is not clear, when there is a repetition or an inconsistency. We can spot ambiguous passages, or misinterpretations that would be grammatically correct. And we systematically double-check all the information. I don't see an AI that would be able to do