Saturday, October 04, 2025

AI wrote nearly a quarter of corporate press releases in 2024




Cell Press





Since 2022, American companies, consumers, and even the United Nations have used large language models—artificial intelligence (AI) systems such as ChatGPT that are trained to create text that reads like human-generated writing. In a study publishing October 2 in the Cell Press journal Patterns, researchers reveal that AI is used in an average of 17% of analyzed corporate and governmental written content, from job posts to press releases, and this rate will likely continue to increase.  

“This is the first comprehensive review of the use of AI-assisted writing across diverse sectors of society,” says corresponding author James Zou of Stanford University. “We were able to look at the adoption patterns across a variety of stakeholders and users, and all of them showed a very consistent increasing trend in the last 2 years.”  

Large language models became widely available to the public in late 2022. Today, more than a billion people around the world use them regularly. 

Zou and his team decided to use an AI detection program that they’d previously developed to investigate the adoption patterns of these AI tools across four different writing contexts: US consumer complaints, company press releases, UN press releases, and job postings. They collected text published between January 2022 and September 2024 from each of these domains and ran it through the program.  

To start, the team analyzed more than 687,000 complaints submitted between 2022 and 2024 to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a US government agency responsible for protecting consumers from banks and other financial companies. They found that about 18% of these complaints were likely written by AI.  

For the corporate news releases, the researchers analyzed text published in three major news release platforms in the US: Newswire, PRWeb, and PRNewswire. They found that since the launch of ChatGPT, nearly a quarter of releases on these sites were AI generated. In particular, science and technology releases had the highest AI use rate by the end of 2023. 

For job postings, the researchers found that posts from large companies on LinkedIn were less likely to be written by AI. However, after investigating vacancy postings from smaller firms, they found that large language models likely assisted in about 10% of the posts.  

The team also looked into UN press releases written in English. They found a significant increase in AI-assisted writing, from 3% in early 2023 to more than 13% by late 2024.  

Overall, the researchers found that the portion of content flagged as written mainly by AI increased sharply from 1.5% before the release of ChatGPT in November 2022 to more than 15% by August 2023. After that, growth slowed down, and the AI adoption rate was about 17% by August 2024. 

“These estimates likely reflect a lower bound of the actual adoption rates,” Zou says. The detector they used cannot accurately differentiate texts that are heavily edited by humans, he notes.  

Zou also says that the AI detection tool works best with a large collection of text. It would not be able to pinpoint whether a single article used AI. 

“I do expect that in the future, the adoption rates will continue to increase but probably not as rapidly as those in the first year,” Zou says. 

“Like all new technologies, it’s difficult to say if these AI models are simply ‘good’ or ‘bad.’ They still make mistakes, so if people completely outsource their job to these tools and don’t bother to check the accuracy, that could lead to errors in their writing.” 

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This work was supported by the National Science Foundation, the US National Institutes of Health, the Silicon Valley Foundation, and the Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative. 

Patterns, Liang et al., “The widespread adoption of large language model-assisted writing across society” https://www.cell.com/patterns/fulltext/S2666-3899(25)00214-4

Patterns (@Patterns_CP), published by Cell Press, is a data science journal publishing original research focusing on solutions to the cross-disciplinary problems that all researchers face when dealing with data, as well as articles about datasets, software code, algorithms, infrastructures, etc., with permanent links to these research outputs. Visit: https://www.cell.com/patterns. To receive Cell Press media alerts, please contact press@cell.com

Use of ambient AI scribes to reduce administrative burden and professional burnout



JAMA Network Open





About The Study: 

This multicenter quality improvement study found that use of an ambient artificial intelligence (AI) scribe platform was associated with a significant reduction in burnout, cognitive task load, and time spent documenting, as well as the perception that it could improve patient access to care and increase attention on patient concerns in an ambulatory environment. These findings suggest that AI may help reduce administrative burdens for clinicians and allow more time for meaningful work and professional well-being.



Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Kristine D. Olson, MD, MSc, email kristine.olson@yale.edu.

To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/

(doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2025.34976)

Editor’s Note: Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, conflict of interest and financial disclosures, and funding and support.

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About JAMA Network Open: JAMA Network Open is an online-only open access general medical journal from the JAMA Network. On weekdays, the journal publishes peer-reviewed clinical research and commentary in more than 40 medical and health subject areas. Every article is free online from the day of publication. 

 

Sudan Ebola virus can persist in survivors for months, WSU study shows




Washington State University





PULLMAN, Washington -- More than half of survivors of the Sudan Ebola virus still suffer serious health problems two years post-infection and the virus can persist in semen and breast milk for months after recovery, according to the first study examining the virus’s long-term effects.

The study, led by researchers at Washington State University, found 57.5% of the survivors of an outbreak in Uganda from 2022-23 reported ongoing and debilitating health issues that interfered with their daily lives. The detection of traces of the virus in semen and breast milk also raised concerns about the potential for sexual and mother-to-child transmission. The findings were recently published in the journal BMC Medicine.

“This is the first time anyone has been able to closely follow Sudan Ebola survivors over the long term, and the results show the virus continues to affect people’s lives well after an outbreak ends,” said lead researcher Kariuki Njenga, a professor in the WSU College of Veterinary Medicine’s Paul G. Allen School for Global Health and senior scientist at WSU Global Health – Kenya. “Just as concerning is the fact we detected the virus in semen and breast milk, which shows there is a risk survivors could pass on Ebola months after recovery.”

Ebola is a severe, often fatal hemorrhagic fever in humans caused by four known strains: Zaire, Sudan, Bundibugyo, and Taï Forest. While the disease progresses similarly across strains — with more than half of cases developing life-threatening complications such as hypotension and multi-organ failure — fatality rates vary. The Zaire and Sudan strains are the most deadly, with case fatality rates ranging from 75–90% for Zaire and 55–65% for Sudan. Previous research has focused primarily on the Zaire strain and has shown survivors can experience long-term complications that persist for years.

The WSU-led study followed 87 survivors from the outbreak in Uganda alongside a control group of 176 community members who had not been infected. Participants were assessed at three, nine, 12, 15 and 24 months after discharge from Ebola treatment facilities. Researchers conducted interviews, collected symptom data and performed clinical examinations, in addition to taking semen and breast milk samples from eligible participants.

Survivors reported symptoms affecting the musculoskeletal system (45%), central nervous system (36%) and eyes (20%) at much higher rates than those in the control group. Common issues included memory loss, joint and back pain, numbness in hands and feet, headaches, vision problems and depression. Half of the survivors reported multiple persistent symptoms that resulted in an inability to perform basic activities. These symptoms remained consistent across the two-year follow-up period, mirroring studies of Zaire Ebola survivors that found sustained symptoms even four years after infection.

“These results point to a kind of ‘long Ebola,’ very similar to what the world has seen with long COVID,” Njenga said. “Symptoms did not significantly improve across two years of follow-up, which is why long-term care and support for survivors are critical.”

Researchers stopped detected Sudan Ebola virus RNA in semen for up to 210 days and in breast milk for up to 199 days after infection. In two men, the virus reappeared in semen samples eight months after consecutive negative results, suggesting possible latency and reactivation. Because semen and breast milk are produced in “immune-privileged” sites where pathogens can sometimes persist, survivors may unknowingly pose a risk to partners or children.

The 2022–23 outbreak sickened 142 people and caused 55 deaths before it was declared over in January 2023. Njenga and his team continue to monitor survivors and plan to publish additional findings at the four-year mark. They are also enrolling participants from a more recent outbreak, which will strengthen statistical analyses and provide deeper insight into viral persistence and long-term health outcomes.

In addition to tracking symptoms, researchers hope to resume semen and breast milk testing to better understand how long the virus can persist in the body.

The study was funded by a grant from the National Institutes of Health.

 

In new research, Montana State scientists explore how viruses replicate and infect




Montana State University





BOZEMAN – Matthew Taylor likened his recently published work alongside doctoral student Gary Dunn to kicking over a rock. Once the discovery was made, it was time to see what lay beneath.

Taylor, an associate professor in Montana State University’s Department of Microbiology and Cell Biology, has studied the replication and infection mechanisms of herpes viruses for more than a decade. Dunn, now a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Idaho, was in the midst of his doctoral work in Taylor’s lab when he realized something: Herpes viruses cultivated using one kind of host cell – known as a producer cell – exhibited differences from the same virus cultivated with a different producer cell.

It was a seemingly small discrepancy with potentially potent ripple effects: How might those differences affect a virus’s ability to infect its host, or its susceptibility to treatment? Scientists have used a variety of established cell lines – producer cells that allow for easily repeatable experiments – for decades, so Dunn and Taylor were examining the very foundation of the field.

“This project is very fundamental virology. It speaks to many of the things we had to do at the very beginning,” said Taylor. “We wanted a propagated virus, so in the 1950s scientists grabbed a cell line which was effective. We have 70 years of development now, and I think as a modern virologist, we constantly need to be asking, are these the right ways?”

Herpes viruses are hugely common all over the world, causing everything from cold sores and chicken pox to shingles and genital herpes. It is estimated that roughly 70% of the world’s population carries herpes simplex virus 1, or HSV-1. For many, the virus causes mild symptoms that resolve quickly, but for some, HSV-1 can lead to severe and lasting effects including encephalitis, or inflammation of the brain.

While the work examining producer cells is fundamental, it challenges historical paradigms of how virologists have conducted research. The findings from Dunn’s doctoral research exploring the impact of different types of producer cells on the resulting cultivated viruses was published earlier this year in the Journal of Virology in an article titled “The producer cell type of HSV-1 alters the proteomic contents and infectious capacity of virions.”

When scientists study viruses, they first grow the virus by infecting producer cells in a lab setting. This gives the virus a host that it uses to replicate itself, allowing researchers to observe that process and the mechanisms viruses use to infect their hosts.

There are many producer cell lines that scientists use based on the goals of their research, Taylor said, most of which were cultivated several decades ago. Those different lines allow scientists to study how viruses replicate on everything from lung cells to kidney cells and even in blood cells.

Dunn’s work is some of the first to establish that different producer cells lead to differences in the resulting viruses. He noticed that some cultivated viruses had different protein compositions and activated different genes during the replication process. Even slight differences, he said, could have downstream impacts on how viruses establish infection and respond to medical intervention.

“Clinically, if you understand that the cell type that's being used to produce a virus can change its composition and other interactions that are taking place, you can start targeting different components of the virus that might be more relevant,” Dunn said. “If you're talking about virus derived from one cell type that's causing differences in protein composition, maybe you could inhibit those interactions, which could lead to new options in treatment.”

Continuing to explore the differences among viruses cultivated with various cell lines could also guide studies into how viruses move through different parts of the body. A virus may replicate differently in a lung than it does in a kidney, and that may also influence how it is spread from person to person.

“The viral genome encodes its own proteins to duplicate itself, but there's a lot more to it than that,” Dunn said. “It takes up cellular components of its host as well, and that incorporation of cellular components into viruses is more of a recent point of emphasis in virology. You have hundreds of different cell types in your body, not to mention all the cell types available for research. You could really make a career out of this kind of research.”

Understanding and cataloging the differences that emerge when different types of producer cells are used will guide future research in Taylor’s lab. Now that the rock has been kicked over, it’s time to explore what’s underneath. Scientists in the 1950s used the best cell lines they knew, and Taylor hopes today’s scientists can do better research based on better knowledge.

“That’s part of the scientific principle. You do the best experiments you can at the time, and when new experiments come along, and the data comes along, we need to be open to those ideas,” he said. “Science is a living thing, and this work is a great example of that.”

UH OH

Researchers wake up microbes trapped in permafrost for thousands of years





University of Colorado at Boulder

Permafrost Tunnel 

image: 

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Permafrost Tunnel near Fairbanks, Alaska. (Credit: Tristan Caro)

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Credit: Tristan Caro





In a new study, a team of geologists and biologists led by CU Boulder resurrected ancient microbes that had been trapped in ice—in some cases for around 40,000 years.

The study is a showcase for the planet’s permafrost. That’s the name for a frozen mix of soil, ice and rocks that underlies nearly a quarter of the land in the northern hemisphere. It’s an icy graveyard where animal and plant remains, alongside plentiful bacteria and other microorganisms, have become stuck in time.

That is, until curious scientists try to wake them up.

The group discovered that if you thaw out permafrost, the microbes within will take a while to become active. But after a few months, like waking up after a long nap, they begin to form flourishing colonies.

“These are not dead samples by any means,” said Tristan Caro, lead author of the study and a former graduate student in geological sciences at CU Boulder. “They’re still very much capable of hosting robust life that can break down organic matter and release it as carbon dioxide.”

Caro and his colleagues published their findings in September in the journal JGR Biogeosciences.

The research has wide implications for the health of the Arctic, and the entire planet, added study co-author Sebastian Kopf.

Today, the world’s permafrost is thawing at an alarming rate because of human-caused climate change. Scientists worry this trend could kick off a vicious cycle. As permafrost thaws, microbes living in the soil will begin to break down organic matter, spewing it into the air as carbon dioxide and methane—both potent greenhouse gases.

“It’s one of the biggest unknowns in climate responses,” said Kopf, professor of geological sciences at CU Boulder. “How will the thawing of all this frozen ground, where we know there’s tons of carbon stored, affect the ecology of these regions and the rate of climate change?”

Long slumber

To explore those unknowns, the researchers traveled to a one-of-a-kind location, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Permafrost Tunnel. This research facility extends more than 350 feet into the frozen ground beneath central Alaska.

When Caro entered the tunnel, which is about as wide as a mine shaft, he could see the bones of ancient bison and mammoth sticking out from the walls.

“The first thing you notice when you walk in there is that it smells really bad. It smells like a musty basement that’s been left to sit for way too long,” said Caro, now a postdoctoral researcher at the California Institute of Technology. “To a microbiologist, that’s very exciting because interesting smells are often microbial.”

In the current study, the researchers collected samples of permafrost that was a few thousand to tens of thousands of years old from the walls of the tunnel. They then added water to the samples and incubated them at temperatures of 39 and 54 degrees Fahrenheit—chilly for humans, but downright boiling for the Arctic.

“We wanted to simulate what happens in an Alaskan summer, under future climate conditions where these temperatures reach deeper areas of the permafrost.” Caro said.

With a twist: The researchers relied on water made up of unusually heavy hydrogen atoms, also known as deuterium. That allowed them to track how their microbes drank up the water, then used the hydrogen to build the membranes made of fatty material that surround all living cells.

Arctic summers

What they saw was surprising.

In the first few months, these colonies grew at a creep, in some cases replacing only about one in every 100,000 cells per day. In the lab, most bacterial colonies can completely turn over in the span of a few hours.

But by the six-month mark, that all changed. Some bacterial colonies even produced gooey structures called “biofilms” that you can see with the naked eye.

Caro said these microbes likely couldn’t infect people, but the team kept them in sealed chambers regardless.

He added that the colonies didn’t seem to wake up that much faster at hotter temperatures. The results could hold lessons for thawing permafrost in the real world: After a hot spell, it may take several months for microbes to become active enough that they begin to emit greenhouse gases into the air in large volumes.

In other words, the longer Arctic summers grow, the greater the risks for the planet.

“You might have a single hot day in the Alaskan summer, but what matters much more is the lengthening of the summer season to where these warm temperatures extend into the autumn and spring,” Caro said.

He added there are still a lot of open questions about these microbes, such as whether ancient organisms behave the same at sites around the world.

“There’s so much permafrost in the world—in Alaska, Siberia and in other northern cold regions,” Caro said. “We’ve only sampled one tiny slice of that.”


Robyn Barbato of the Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory drills a sample from the walls of the Permafrost Tunnel.

Credit

Tristan Caro