About · How we use AI
Small team, big help, people in charge.
Lakes Area Connect is a small, independent guide to Detroit Lakes and lakes country. AI tools help us research, write, design and narrate, so we can share more useful local information, more often, and keep almost all of it free. Here is how we use them, and the lines we hold.
What AI helps with
- Research and organizing. Pulling together event listings, city and county notices and history so nothing important gets missed.
- Drafting. First drafts of captions, scripts and guides, which we then rewrite and check.
- Pictures. Many of our illustrations, including the print-style art across this site, are made with AI image tools. Real photographs are credited to the people and archives who took or keep them.
- Voices. Some of our videos use AI narration voices. They are not real people and we do not pretend they are.
- This website. AI helped build and test these pages.
What people do
A person decides what we cover, checks the facts against the source and approves every post before it goes out. People handle corrections and anything sensitive. AI does not speak for us in the comments: it may help us sort comments so questions get seen, but it does not answer questions, argue or make promises on its own.
The lines we hold
- Facts come from sources. AI is never the source. Dates, places and details link to the organizer, the city, the county or the archive, with the day we checked.
- Real places stay real. We research a place before we picture it. We do not invent shorelines, buildings or landmarks, and when accuracy matters we use real photographs or draw from them carefully.
- No made-up people. No fake residents, invented experiences or AI-drawn faces standing in for our neighbors.
- Your memories are yours. A comment is not permission to reuse someone's story or photo. We ask first.
- We say when we get it wrong. Corrections are made plainly, with what changed.
Why we work this way
A local guide is only worth following if you can trust it. AI lets a small operation do the legwork of a bigger one: checking more sources, covering more towns, making things easier to read. We use it where it makes the information more useful and easier to find, and we leave it out where it would blur what is real.
Where you will see a note
On Facebook, posts with AI-made visuals or voices carry a small "AI content used" note. On this website, this page is that note: assume illustrations and narration may be made with AI, and look for a credit line on real photographs.
If something looks off, tell us on the Facebook Page.