PlayWV covers West Virginia’s licensed online casinos and sportsbooks 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 West Virginia Lottery Commission, and we check our licensing claims against the Lottery 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
Our news is reported and edited by journalists who specialize in the gaming industry. AI is a tool that supports their work, not a substitute for it.
What AI helps us do
- Streamline routine newsroom tasks so our journalists can focus on reporting and analysis.
- Monitor news developments and flag potential story ideas for editorial review.
- Organize and interpret large datasets to support deeper reporting.
- Assist with background research and identify areas that may require additional investigation.
- Surface credible sources and fresh perspectives that can strengthen coverage.
- Provide an additional review for grammar, clarity, and factual consistency after editorial editing.
What AI will never do for us
- Publish content without review and approval from a human editor.
- Replace the expertise, judgment, or experience of our writers and editors.
- Operate as anything more than a supporting tool within our editorial process.
“We view AI as a tool, not a replacement for human expertise. It helps us cover the online gambling industry more effectively by streamlining basic tasks, giving our editors and writers more time to focus on in-depth reporting, analysis, and the high-quality content readers trust. Like any new addition to a journalist’s toolkit, AI is most valuable when guided by experienced professionals.”
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, and which operators hold a West Virginia license. These pages change constantly, because the industry does.
What AI helps us do
- Speed up research and information verification.
- Keep bonus offers, promotions, and other frequently changing details up to date.
- Organize and analyze large data sets to uncover meaningful insights.
- Flag outdated, inconsistent, or conflicting information from operators.
- Make complex gambling and regulatory topics easier for readers to understand.
What AI will never do for us
- Publish content without human oversight.
- Replace our firsthand testing of casinos and sportsbooks.
- Determine our ratings, reviews, or recommendations.
- Override the editorial standards and judgment that guide our coverage.
“The online gambling industry moves quickly, and keeping pace with hundreds of operators requires managing an enormous amount of information. We use AI as a research and data-gathering tool to help streamline that process, allowing our editors to spend more time analyzing operators, verifying information, and creating the honest, player-focused reviews our audience expects.”
3. Our reviews
Every PlayWV review is built on first-hand testing. A member of our team registers the account, makes the deposit, plays the games, 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.
- Review our testing framework for potential gaps or inconsistencies.
- Identify minor grammar, spelling, and formatting issues after editorial review.
- Perform the calculations that power our ratings methodology.
- Verify basic public information, such as corporate details and policy page locations.
- Standardize screenshots and images to meet our publishing guidelines.
What AI will never do for us
- Create, alter, or fabricate testing results.
- Influence how operators are rated or ranked.
- Make editorial judgments reserved for our review team.
- Replace hands-on testing with information sourced from the web.
- Modify or override the proprietary methodology behind our ratings.
“AI supports our review process by helping manage and organize information, but it cannot replace genuine hands-on experience. Every insight we publish starts with real-world testing conducted by our experts. Without that human evaluation of quality, fairness, and user experience, there’s nothing meaningful for AI to analyze in the first place.”
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 PlayWV carries a byline naming the writer or the PlayWV 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 PlayWV is inaccurate or out of date, email corrections@playwv.com. A human reads every message sent to that address.
Third-party content
This policy covers content produced by the PlayWV 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.
