03 - Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Journalism

AI use has become commonplace in many workplaces over the past couple of years, including in journalism. In a study conducted by the University of Maryland, researchers found that 9 percent of major newspapers use AI to produce news content. AI tools such as ChatGPT, Copilot, and Claude have been used to assist journalists during the process of writing. They can be used to summarize lengthy documents, transcribe audio, and help draft news stories. Now, these tools can be very useful in a vacuum; it takes a lot of time to write a well-researched article, and using these tools helps streamline and optimize these otherwise tedious tasks. 

so much news being reported daily, the Daily Mail publishes over 1000 articles per day; it can be hard for newsrooms to keep up with the demands of the public while also reporting in a timely fashion. But when attention becomes a commodity, competition gets stiff, and newsrooms get shut down due to economic strain, journalists may cut corners, use AI as more than just a tool, and prioritize quantity over quality. Given that, on average, 70–80% of people only read the headlines, and only 20% of people read beyond, if you grab someone's attention with just that headline, a journalist might not bother to go write a story and just generate one since nobody will read it. When a click can be the difference between keeping the lights on and unemployment, you may take the easy way out.

There's also the fear of disinformation due to AI. Much of the public has a distrust of AI; in a poll of 1200 Americans, 86 percent distrust AI results. Especially as AI grows more and more sophisticated, it's becoming harder and harder to tell what's real. In 2024, a European journalist’s reporting was altered to spread disinformation, undermining his credibility. As the use of AI becomes more commonplace in journalism, public distrust could continue to grow, damaging the news's place in society.

Overall, AI is gonna be used no matter what; the genie's bottle has been opened and won't be closed. But it's naive to think this technology will only be a tool; we live in a profit-driven world. If the use of ai help will drive up profits, a news company will use it to the greatest extent; at some point, ethics and integrity will be put on the back burner in favor of economic success.