Billionaire investor admits using AI for Wall Street Journal op-ed on Treasury secretary

Druckenmiller, 73, told the news outlet Notus: "I'm not embarrassed by it." The Wall Street Journal's editorial page editor, Paul Gigot, defended Druckenmiller in a statement, saying the question for the paper is whether a contributor's work reflects an original argument and whether the author has standing and credibility. "In Stan Druckenmiller's case, we have had a relationship with him for many years, and nobody can doubt that his op-ed is his genuine opinion," Gigot said, adding that AI is "a fact of modern life."

Druckenmiller further defended the choice in an interview with the Wall Street Journal. "At 73 I'm kind of proud of using it," he said, adding: "These are my ideas and I've been speaking about them for over 15 years, as anyone who knows me knows. Would I prefer that I was a great writer? Yes, but that's not who I am." In the op-ed, Druckenmiller opposed the US Treasury doubling the size of its government debt buybacks.

The disclosure comes as media organizations continue to grapple with the boundaries of AI use. Earlier this month, a UC Berkeley math professor, Zvezdelina Stankova, came under criticism for using AI to edit an op-ed in the San Francisco Standard. She maintained the piece, which argued that test-blind college admissions has resulted in under-prepared students, was the result of "intensive human work." The Standard said the piece reflected the "original analysis" of Stankova and her colleagues. In March, the New York Times cut ties with a freelance journalist whose use of AI resulted in plagiarism from a Guardian book review; the Times added an editor's note to the review.