The growth of AI is seemingly unstoppable. But what impact is it having on the journalism industry, and how can it be used in a positive way?
How has AI impacted journalism thus far?
AI has already changed the ways in which news is produced and distributed.
The introduction of Generative AI tools such as ChatGPT brought the potential for machines to produce content that is hard to distinguish from that written by humans. However, these tools do not ‘create’ content from scratch. If you ask them about a news item, they will trawl millions of existing sources and generate a summary.
This “summarisation” is how many people will get their news nowadays, so it is important to note that there have been some issues with accuracy and disinformation – notably with Apple’s news notification summaries which were part of its new AI feature. These have now been disabled.
What can AI not do that journalists can do?
There are still plenty of things that journalists do that AI cannot accomplish. This includes attending and reporting on events such as court cases and political rallies, interviewing patients, prisoners, and politicians, cultivating the trust of a whistleblower, reporting from the middle of a warzone, and much more.
And, perhaps crucially, AI can never capture the “emotion” or human connection with any event or occurrence that a journalist could convey. With AI, the focus is on facts rather than emotions.
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How can AI help?
AI can help journalism in a number of ways – as long as it is monitored, regulated, and used sensibly.
It can be used to conduct background research which allows the journalist to concentrate on the current piece. It can be used to fact-check, analyse large volumes of data, and translate content into other languages. It can also be used to efficiently distribute news to the people who want to read it.
