Computers can reason and learn just like humans due to the rapidly progressing technologies of artificial intelligence (AI). The complex tool of AI is being integrated into many fields of work to help with efficiency and basic tasks. Doctors can use AI to help diagnose patients and analyze imaging data and financiers can use AI to quickly analyze market data. Most of the known usages are in the scientific and computational fields. But how might AI potentially play a role in the creative, literary field of journalism?
AI can help journalists be more efficient.
There are a lot of things that need to be done as a journalist. Some of the tasks needed to be completed every time an article is written are interviews, researching, collecting data, writing, editing news, collaborating with others and fact-checking. When you have that much on your plate, having AI help complete the timely tasks is a big benefit.
Journalists need to spend a lot of time finding good issues to write about. There are so many diverse topics that interest readers, so it can be difficult to settle on one. AI is able to take large amounts of data from social media and find patterns showing the most popular topics, making it easier to brainstorm ideas and find the topics that strongly interest people.
Additionally, AI can help with long tasks such as parts of research and entering data. AI could find keywords that are relevant to the journalist’s writing topic in websites and search engines powered by AI could also be a source of information.
AI can also help analyze a user’s favorite topics to generate content that appeals to them. Big journalism websites could make a survey that asks a user what topics interest them the most. The first articles that pop up would be their interest, so they are more likely to read.
If a news organization wants to provide more topics but they don’t want to spend an amount hiring people who are experts in those topics, AI can be used.
Although AI can help with efficiency, it is unlikely to take over a journalist’s job.
With the creative process, it’s important to have human touch. AI can generate certain things, but for now, many people believe it’s not fully developed in producing writing that sounds human.
Humans can analyze data and judge things in human-like ways. Additionally, journalists can help engage the readers and make hooks that are more intriguing and experts can provide background information on their certain topic of expertise.
AI can also pose a threat to the field of journalism.
AI could be used to generate stories and news articles and people could claim it’s their own. For example, ChatGPT, an AI powered search engine, can make articles in a couple of seconds. People could take these articles, upload them onto a digital newspaper website with their name written on it and go viral. This brings moral concerns to not just journalism, but writing in general.
Another threat can be the potential of AI. People are unsure if AI can replace humans and their storytelling skills in the near future. The programming of AI is often based on different writing styles and literary works, and as it becomes better and more enhanced, it could potentially replicate a human’s writing styles and skills.
Also, it is hard to know if the data generated by AI is authentic. As AI is still developing, it is likely to make errors. Journalists would need to verify the accuracy of research, leading to even more time spent on fact checking, than how long it takes to research without AI.
It’s hard to come up with laws involving AI.
In the article, “AI is “existential threat to journalism and creative industries: MMEA,” by Tom Fogden, The Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA) says that “technology is an existential threat to the creative industries.” Journalists are already profiting off of AI and the opinions of what are the correct and incorrect uses of AI are still being determined. Some people say that the usage of AI is theft. Shoebridge wanted an “AI Tax” to be placed on creative work that is AI sourced. It is hard to apply laws when AI is still developing. Some people believe robots will take over the world and others believe AI will just be used as an enhancing tool.
Since AI is still developing, it is hard for people to decipher whether AI will positively or negatively affect journalism as it becomes more popular. However, the very clear implication is that artificial intelligence will eventually have a prominent role in the future of people and, most likely, the future of journalism.
