How Service Break Uses (and Doesn’t Use) AI
Service Break is a student-led sports platform built on real people, real stories and real moments. In our first year, that has mostly meant one person holding everything together behind the scenes. AI tools have helped make the website possible at that scale, but they will never replace human judgment, lived experience or on-the-ground coverage.
Why we use AI at all
Service Break is small, student-led and still growing. For much of our launch phase, there has been one single editor running reporting, photography, editing, outreach and the site itself. In that context, AI helps us:
- Organise ideas, drafts and structures when time and capacity are limited
- Check basic facts against public sources and flag potential errors
All AI suggestions are reviewed, edited and approved by a human editor before anything is published. AI is a support, not an author.
As we onboard more student writers, photographers and editors, our reliance on AI will decrease. The long-term goal is simple: as the human team grows, AI becomes less necessary.
What we will never do
There are clear lines we will not cross:
- We will never use AI to fabricate sporting events, results, quotes or people.
- We will never use AI to generate images of matches, competitions or athletes and present them as real coverage. Our event photography will always come from real photographers on real sidelines.
- We will never use AI to generate our visual identity. All Service Break graphics, illustrations and logos are hand-drawn or designed by human creators.
- We will not use AI tools that are known to disregard creators’ rights or steal from working artists and journalists.
If you see an action image, event gallery, logo or graphic on Service Break, it was created by a human.
Our environmental awareness
Generative AI is not free for the planet. Running large models in data centres uses electricity and significant amounts of freshwater for cooling, contributing to rising water demand in already stressed regions. Recent analyses estimate that data centres worldwide consumed around 175 billion litres of water in 2023, with AI-specialised facilities expected to more than triple that use by 2030.[oeko]
As a small, student-led platform, Service Break’s direct AI footprint is tiny compared with the large tech companies operating these systems, but we still take the impact seriously. Our commitments are:
- To use AI tools selectively, not by default, and only where they meaningfully support human work we would otherwise struggle to deliver
- To prioritise low-impact practices in our own operations where we can, and to stay informed as better, more efficient AI options become available
- To keep our creative core human: our photography, event coverage, graphics and logos are produced by real people, not AI models
We will keep reviewing our use of AI as more transparent environmental data becomes available, and will update this statement if our practices change.
Our commitment to trust
We know there is real concern about AI in media, and we share many of those concerns. For us, responsible use means:
- Being open that AI is used for support tasks, not for fabricating reality
- Keeping humans accountable for accuracy, fairness and tone in every piece we publish
- Continuing to invest in and onboard student writers, photographers and creators so that human voices stay at the centre of what we do
If you ever have questions about how a specific piece was made, email info@servicebreak.co.uk and we will explain our process.