Journalism needs to avoid mistakes in the AI era

In fact, 2023 has seen many incidents that show that some press organizations have lost their way on the AI path and the press must avoid those mistakes in the future. However, the question is, what will the press need to do?

Distinguishing “AI Journalism” and “AI Big Tech”

First of all, don’t consider AI as a “magic wand” to save journalism. Journalism is still a private affair between people and people. In some ways, AI is no better than the internet, computers or smartphones in helping us do our jobs better. It is true that major newspapers around the world are applying AI tools to their work, but only in a supporting role for journalism activities.

In particular, do not confuse AI that Big Tech is using with AI for journalism. Many Big Tech AI tools are taking existing things, especially journalism content, and turning them into their own - a form of copyright infringement that the whole world is condemning. Journalism must consider AI in a different form, using AI as a supporting tool to have more quality works, publications... as well as to be able to reach and interact with readers better.

In fact, 2023 has witnessed many incidents showing that some news organizations have lost their way on the AI path, when using AI to write articles and have faced criticism, condemnation and self-destruction of their value - reputation. The most prominent case is the prestigious American sports news site Sports Illustrated (SI).

Specifically, in late November 2023, the Futurism website reported that Sports Illustrated had used articles with unidentifiable authors, which were said to be written by AI. Although SI did not admit it, Futurism sources asserted: “This content was completely AI-generated, no matter what they say.” The newspaper’s reputation was damaged and it had to terminate its contract with the company responsible for publishing these articles. In early 2023, AI-based news writing experiments also encountered problems at the Gannett newspaper chain and the technology website CNET.

Thus, although AI is being seen as a lever for journalism to develop again, journalism must essentially produce its own content, or at least can only use AI to extract content from its own previous data or documents. This is considered the leading AI journalism ethics principle today.

Newspapers only need to paint the car scratches in the AI era picture 1

How is journalism using AI?

While AI has been adopted by many industries to automate many tasks, journalism remains cautious due to the issues mentioned above. According to the latest research by JournalismAI, newsrooms are still using AI as a support tool, not replacing reporters in writing articles.

Specifically, in the field of news gathering, AI is being used for tasks such as optical character recognition (OCR), speech-to-text, and text extraction - boring tasks that used to take up a lot of journalists' time. Software currently widely used for this task includes Colibri.ai, SpeechText.ai, Otter.ai, and Whisper.

Additionally, AI will also be used to detect trends and news topics of interest. This can be done by web scraping and data mining services such as CrowdTangle, Dataminr, and Rapidminer. In particular, newsrooms can partner with AI companies to create an AI tool or chatbot to serve their own specific tasks.

In news production, AI is being used by newsrooms to verify facts. For example, natural language processing (NLP) models are assisting in fact-checking. It can help newsrooms identify statements and match them to previously fact-checked claims.

Some newsrooms have also experimented with and used genAI technologies like ChatGPT for content production tasks, but only for summaries, headlines, or visual storytelling. Additionally, Grammarly and other spell-checking AI tools are used to edit, proofread, and improve the quality of written content.

In the field of news distribution, many major media and press agencies in the world have applied AI to increase reader accessibility, which is considered the most important field for journalism. Specifically, AI will help personalize and recommend content that matches readers' interests. In addition, AI technology that converts voice to text or vice versa converts text to audio will help readers have more access to articles.

Some news organizations are also using AI tools like Echobox and SocialFlow to publish more efficiently and quickly on social media. Chatbots are also being used to make the reader experience more enjoyable and achieve faster response rates. For example, WhatsApp chatbots are being used to send daily news summaries by several newspapers in the US and Europe.

Also in the news distribution space, using AI to improve search visibility is crucial for digital journalism. AI-powered SEO tools can help newsrooms better understand their audience’s interests. Ubersuggest is an AI tool for online keyword searches, Google Discover shows what’s trending, and CrowdTangle shows which social media posts are performing well.

AI tools are clearly essential in the new era of journalism, just as newspapers and journalists cannot do without cameras, video cameras, the internet, computers..., and the impact of AI will be even more profound. But once again, note that journalism cannot use AI to copy or infringe copyright to create content. That will be the path that will make journalism sink deeper and deeper into crisis.

Newspapers only need to paint the car scratches in the AI era picture 2 — Most newsrooms believe AI will help journalism develop further. Illustration photo: GI

Nearly three-quarters of newsrooms believe AI will bring new opportunities to journalism, according to a global survey by JournalismAI released in September 2023. About 85% said they were already experimenting with AI to help with tasks like coding, creating images, and writing summaries. Meanwhile, more than 60% of those in the industry expressed concerns about the ethics of AI journalism.

Tran Hoa

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