Greg Archer of the Inland Empire Community Foundation wrote a piece about the grant behind this site, and desertsun.com ran it on September 25.
What’s it about? A grant from the IE Journalism Innovation Hub+Fund, by way of the foundation, is backing AICV’s journalism work. The piece calls the plan The AI Beat: reporting on how AI is changing everyday life and institutions across the Inland Empire, run through InformedIE, an app that’s still in beta.
Why does it matter? Archer starts with a choice readers now face: read the story about the city council meeting, or just ask ChatGPT what happened. He points to the Reuters Institute’s 2025 Generative AI and News Report on the rise of generative AI use. Then the piece turns to Sat Singh, AICV’s founder, who says he wants to connect independent local journalists without becoming an aggregator, and to get “the work that they’re doing on the ground” seen.
Why is it coming up now? The piece doesn’t say. It does describe the beat as still in preparation for launch.
Where does AI fit in the reporting? Singh says it helps with research and synthesis and lets you take on far more information than before, but it “requires humans in the loop.”
How do I get involved? Archer points readers to aicoachellavalley.org. Along the way he mentions AICV’s workshops, including a spring Agent Meetup for people building with AI agents, and says Singh has run virtual sessions on what AI might mean for local journalism.
That grant also helps fund AICV News, the site you’re reading. We couldn’t open the Desert Sun’s page ourselves, so we worked from the text Sat gave us.