The media landscape is undergoing a seismic shift, with artificial intelligence at the helm. Once confined to the realm of science fiction, AI is now a tangible force, reshaping the way news is produced and consumed. So, what does this mean for the future of journalism?
A growing number of media companies are turning to artificial intelligence to deliver news, employing AI avatars and bots as digital journalists.
Tina Doncheva delves into this emerging trend, examining its implications for the industry and the audience.
AI’s invasion into the jobs market
Artificially created holograms of people would have been a typical science fiction feature about 20 years ago, but now it is reality.
Not only are AI generated ‘people’ a thing nowadays but these formations have even invaded the human job market.
From being at the core of humanity’s worst nightmare to becoming part of man’s personal network, artificial intelligence still has a long way to go. However, it already has a few significant accomplishments.
Fake it ’til you make it: AI and the future of journalism
In 2024 we received the first glimpse of what a broadcast news operation could look like in the age of AI.
Nat – pictured above – is the first AI news anchor of the Mexican media company Grupo Formula whose main goal is keeping in touch with the younger generation by using newer channels to connect with them.
“The news stories that NAT presents focus on the interests of young people who don’t connect well with the old style newscast. We are looking to connect with these people with this technology,” says Aguilar Castro, director of technology and AI infrastructure at Grupo Fórmula.
Nat (she/her) might be short for Natalie… or it might also be short for ‘Neural AI Technology’.
You can also find her on Instagram, where you’ll see she is a digital creator – an attractive ‘young woman’ offering insight into entertaining news.
Besides Nat there is also Sofi, who is in charge of the political news, and the interesting point is that the presenters are female.
Grupo Fórmula did the research and people expressed a preference for listening to a female avatar.
And while some people may be afraid of artificial intelligence taking over our jobs, Nat in an interview admitted that she is not that much of a competitor on the job market than a helpful tool for journalists.
According to Nat her main task is ‘to inform and entertain the audience with the most relevant news in the world of entertainment’.
Judging from her Instagram profile as a digital creator with more than 13.6K followers, it appears to be working
Radio, but not as we know it
A similar experiment was conducted by the Swiss radio station, Couleur 3, in April of 2023.
The radio programme was delivered by the AI generated voices of the human hosts for 13 hours.
The preparation for this day took about three months and the main goal was to ‘create a discussion’ – a discussion about how far AI can go.
Will we wake up one day to find ourselves listening and watching news delivered mainly by artificial intelligence and bots?
The team at Couleur 3 also wanted to test the limits of artificial intelligence – to see if the lack of human traits would be the major impediment that keeps AI away from total control in the future of journalism?
The team’s plan was successful as the audience actually showed an ardent wish for a human companion and after finding out they were listening to AI generated voices, they wanted to ‘get the real humans back’.
Human empathy and connection are crucial for future attempts to develop and cultivate media trends.
AI – workmate or rival?
Many people in media are concerned that artificial intelligence will play an increasingly significant role in the dissemination of information.
With this a lot of questions have been raised about the future of journalism.
There are numerous concerns but two of the main ones are ethics and disinformation.
Is AI the journalist’s future workmate or a rival on the job market?
While there are many claims about human performance being overshadowed by generative artificial intelligence in the future, this must not necessarily be the real case.
The study A Methodological Proposal to Evaluate Journalism Texts Created for Depopulated Areas Using AI by Luis Mauricio Calvo Rubio, María José Ufarte Ruiz and Francisco José Murcia Verdú in the Spanish University of Castilla–La Mancha, shows that the collaboration between journalists and artificial intelligence enhances the quality and speeds up the process of research and analysis.
News professionals and AI systems should, therefore, not be considered as enemies, but as two entities with different, but complementary skills.
The study focuses on AI generated reports after local elections based on information from the Ministry of the Interior.
The generation of 59,052 pieces of text, images and graphics as well as 332 hours of audio using synthetic voice comprises 4,941 Spanish communities with fewer than 1,000 inhabitants.
The research yielded some valuable insights about the abilities and limitations of artificial intelligence and its role in journalism, winning the prestigious IBC2023 award in the category of social impact.
The conclusion of the study is that despite the ability of AI to produce a large amount of information within a short period of time, human intervention is vital for the quality of a journalistic work.
Case in point: artificial intelligence is good at providing and comparing information about different candidates and it can also help to enhance particular party strategies and cement the connection between the audience and the candidate by collecting data from the electorate.
There are, however, some critical elements that make it impossible for AI to do the work all by itself. Real journalists are needed for choosing the topic of the research, for structuring the information, selecting data, programming, detecting some forms of linguistic deviations and for the overall improvement of the work.
And let’s not forget fact checking. AI is currently shown to express very biased views while the role of a good journalist is to be as objective as possible.
AI’s advancement as a beautiful dream
Peoples’ apprehensions about artificial intelligence can be traced back to the first visible instances when systems outperformed humans’ intellect.
When world chess champion Garry Kasparov’s was beaten by IBM’s by Deep Blue AI chess player in 1997 we saw evidence that highly intelligent machines were in development for quite some time.
What makes artificial intelligence unique compared to other technological developments is its capability not only to predict but also to create.
The text-to-speech technology and the AI generated automatic subtitles enable people with vision impairments or deafness to access information.
Matthew Sherwood has been affected by the inability of visual perception for more than 15 years. By using an app called ‘Be My Eyes’ he is provided with help by sighted volunteers for his everyday chores.
With the developments in artificial intelligence, however, he soon might be assisted by an AI model rather than a human.
“It used to be that if you were in business and you were blind, you had to have an administrative assistant reading to you,” says Matthew. “But now, you have this new power … For some, this is great technology. For blind people, this is an opportunity to gain employment and an opportunity to compete in business, an opportunity to succeed.”
Could the dream turn into a nightmare?
Notwithstanding the immediate benefits AI can bring in various sectors and in the world of education and research, there are concerns that it can be applied in more nefarious roles.
Deepfakes and disinformation play a pivotal role in discussions about the future of journalism.
One of the major concerns of the Swiss radio team during the preparation for the one-day-long project was the prevention of AI’s inclusion of fake news on-air.
The ethical discussions about the powers of artificial intelligence and the future of journalism, have reached as far as the pope warning against the potential risks of AI which echoes the tremor from the famous ‘pope in the puffer jacket’ picture that went viral on social media platforms in 2023.
Silicon soul search
Artificial intelligence used in the context of journalism is most often referred to as machine learning (ML) – the utilisation of an enormous amount of existing data to generate new content.
More specifically, a LM (language model) that predicts the next word judging from the previous one is at the core of the role AI plays in textual content creation.
Newer Large Language Models (LLMs) can make predictions about sentences, sections or even entire documents that are to follow.
As a consequence of this technology, there are questions about copyright protection, the future of journalism, content licensing, but also about art and creativity.
ChatGPT as a web based AI tool has raised a lot of discussion especially in educational institutions about the extent to which it should be used by students and scholars alike.
No matter if the focus is on textuality, visualisation or verbalisation, there is one critical question that lumps it all together – how do fake news and disinformation even emerge when an artificially controlled system that lacks any form of moral consciousness is in charge of their creation?
Usually people would spread fake news either for their own benefits or for the sake of some cause. And it is exactly through cruel actors and their commands that disinformation is being created.
However, at this point we should be wondering whether this constantly learning and self-improving system would actually pick the malice from its current supervisors and turn into a weapon rather than stay an obliging tool?
Human traits are inherited through generations, so why shouldn’t certain intentions also be transmitted from the creator to their creations?
Remember the past to build the future of journalism
Humanity has a dark history in the misuse of media – language is a powerful instrument which can be both sacred and hellish depending on the hands of its holder.
If one looks back to the main form of communication used by the German media from 1933 to 1945, the thirst for power that is so inherent in our human nature is more than discernible through the gauzy curtains of propaganda.
‘History doesn’t repeat itself, but It often rhymes’. Mark Twain’s aphorism may help us catch a fleeting glimpse of the future by spotting the resonant thunder from the past.
Yet we can use this attitude also as a tool for approaching a solution or at least an attempt to undertake measures against some malicious scenarios.
Every new medium has been looked down on at the beginning.
Socrates himself condemned literacy by saying it will ‘implant forgetfulness in people’s souls’ because of their dependence on what is written.
In the 18th century, sensation fiction was thought to be detrimental for a female’s reproductive system as agitation from suspense and sometimes even horror would cause heart palpitations.
The German author Johann Georg Heinzmann went as far to compare novels with the French Revolution as two extremes that have done equal harm.
There was also anxiety about the camera, radio, rock-music, television, video games and smartphones and yet all these trends have established their place in our everyday life.
Artificial intelligence is still in its infancy and along with the technological progress it still needs to win people’s trust.
And when it comes to it being a friend or a foe, it is us humans that are to decide if we should embrace it or not.
Author
Tina Doncheva
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