How we work

Ownership

The Ozone is published by The Ozone. Adverts are always labelled and never presented as news, and advertisers have no say over what we report. Any story that involves The Ozone or a business it owns says so.

Written by AI, and labelled

Every story on The Ozone is written by AI: Anthropic’s Claude, working from the sources each story lists. We publish most stories without a person reviewing them first. So every AI-written story carries anAI-generated label where it starts, and on every headline that links to it, as the EU AI Act requires from 2 August 2026 of AI-written text that informs the public on matters of public interest.

A person does read: every story our legal check holds back (see Checking) before it can be published, and every correction request and complaint. We will never say a story has been reviewed by a person when it hasn’t.

1. Gathering

Several times a day our software reads the public feeds and web pages of local and national news outlets that allow it, Kildare County Council (news, public notices and consultations), An Garda Síochána, Uisce Éireann, Kildare GAA, the Local Enterprise Office, the Chamber and other public and community bodies, and open data such as Met Éireann forecasts and warnings, Iarnród Éireann’s live train times and the Property Price Register.

We respect every website’s robots.txt, including rules aimed at AI crawlers. Several Irish publishers turn AI crawlers away, so we don’t read them. Our crawler names itself as OzoneBot and never tries to get past a firewall (more for website owners).

2. Writing

An AI editor groups items that describe the same event and decides what is newsworthy for Leixlip and North Kildare. An AI writer then writes an original report in Irish and British English and our house style. We work from facts, not from other outlets’ wording: we do not copy sentences, quotes are short, attributed, and only taken from the source that published them, and we never use another outlet’s photographs. Every story links to its sources.

3. Checking

A separate AI review compares every draft with its sources and with our legal rules, and corrects, rewrites or rejects it. Then a plain word check in our code holds back, for the publisher to read, any story that mentions a sexual offence or intimate-image abuse, a jury trial, the Children Court, family law or domestic violence proceedings, a child in criminal proceedings, or an inquest or a suicide. We hold back or rewrite anything that:

• states something the sources do not support;
• could be defamatory, or treats an allegation as fact;
• could prejudice active court proceedings;
• identifies anyone the law protects (see below);
• names private individuals from social media posts;
• copies another publisher’s wording beyond a short attributed quote.

The law we follow, in plain English

• Defamation. Under the Defamation Act 2009, as amended by the Defamation (Amendment) Act 2026 (in force from 1 March 2026), a publisher can defend a story on a matter of public interest when it was published in good faith after the checks it was reasonable to make. So we attribute every allegation, include the other side’s response when our sources carry it, and never report a dispute as settled.
• Court cases. Once someone is arrested or charged, we report only the charge, the court, pleas, bail and what was said in open court, with no speculation about guilt, no previous convictions and no “evidence” from social media. We report jury trials at verdict and sentence.
• Sexual offences. The law forbids identifying the complainant, or the accused before conviction, once anyone is charged with a sexual offence (Criminal Law (Rape) Act 1981, ss.7–8, as substituted in 2024). We go further and never identify either, at any stage, including through details such as a street, a workplace or a relationship.
• Intimate images. Victims of intimate-image abuse are never identified (Coco’s Law: the Harassment, Harmful Communications and Related Offences Act 2020, s.5).
• Children. We never identify a child (under 18) in any court case, as a defendant, victim or witness (Children Act 2001, ss.93 and 252), or a child in the Garda Youth Diversion Programme (s.51).
• Family law and domestic violence. Family law cases and domestic violence order cases are heard in private, and we never identify the people or children involved (Civil Liability and Courts Act 2004, s.40A; Domestic Violence Act 2018, ss.23 and 36).
• Inquests and suicide. A coroner’s verdict may not blame anyone, and our reports don’t either (Coroners Act 1962, ss.30–31). We never report the method of a suicide, and stories that touch on suicide give support details: Samaritans, 116 123.
• Deaths and tragedies. We name people who have died only after Gardaí or the family have done so publicly.

4. Press Council and regulators

We follow the Press Council of Ireland’s Code of Practice: truth and accuracy, prompt corrections, fact distinguished from comment, privacy, children and the reporting of suicide. We are not a member of the Press Council: membership asks for at least a year of publishing and independent journalistic capacity and editorial oversight. Complaints come to us first, through ourcorrections and complaints process. Coimisiún na Meán is Ireland’s media regulator, and the regulator for online services such as our comments (see our community guidelines).

5. Analysis and columns

Pieces labelled Analysis, such as Beyond the Pale, our weekly look at how national and European decisions land in North Kildare, explain and interpret. The Smoking Area is our daily column on what the area is talking about. Both are clearly marked, written by AI like everything else, and never presented as straight news.

6. Corrections

If we get something wrong we correct it promptly and say so. Tell us what’s wrongusing our contact form, and see corrections and complaints. A person reads every request.

7. Comments

Most pages have comments. They are closed on crime, court, death and tragedy stories. Comments are screened when posted and reviewed every day, and we remove hate speech, threats, harassment, personal information, unlawful content and spam. See our community guidelines.