Category: AI in the newsroom

“. . . Google sends a lot of traffic to news sites — more than any other external source by far. Newsrooms spend time and money figuring out a lot of those answers, and the reward they’ve traditionally reaped for them…

“. . . in just a few hours, anyone with minimal coding ability and an ax to grind could launch networks of false local news sites — with plausible-but-fake news items, staff and editorial policies — using ChatGPT.“ Alex Mahadevan…

“As long as you are clear on what it can and cannot do, the tool can help you out with some menial tasks so you can focus on the stories that matter to your audience.“ Marcela Hunova Use cases are…

“We have no idea how its creator, OpenAI, handles data fed to the bot, and it is likely our inputs are being plowed right back into training the model, which means they could potentially be regurgitated to people using it…

“If you’re doing original reporting and unearthing things people don’t already know, you’re probably gonna be okay. But if you’re an analysis person, let’s say, 20 years down the road, you might need to find something else to do.“ –…

““First, no LLM tool will be accepted as a credited author on a research paper. That is because any attribution of authorship carries with it accountability for the work, and AI tools cannot take such responsibility.““ NATURE Editorial Leading science…

“This year we’ll start to see more of these tools being opened up to creators, journalists, and others, allowing us to create new versions of ourselves, of others, and the world around us.”  WNIP synthesizes the most recent report from…

“ . . . given that AI programs assemble articles by churning through mountains of publicly available information, even the best automated stories are essentially clip jobs, devoid of new findings or original” reporting. Paul Farhi The Post documents what…

“The debates over automation in journalism are not straightforward. Many welcome the capability to make non-journalistic tasks more efficient, but at the same time worry that cheaply produced synthetic media and semi-automated content could further commoditise news and undermine trust.”…

“Issues such as the differences between narrow and general AI, data fundamentals, non-code tools for journalism, algorithms as amplifiers of social bias, and the distinctions between automation and AI are among the questions that need further consideration in journalism programs…

“. . . what new human journalism practices are there that don’t just broaden or deepen the existing production model, but serve to re-imagine it and its outcomes?“ Mark Deuze and Charlie Beckett Threats of automation are proportional to the…

“. . . this year’s data confirm how the various shocks of the last few years, including the Coronavirus pandemic, have further accelerated structural shifts towards a more digital, mobile, and platform-dominated media environment, with further implications for the business…

“. . . we confirmed our suspicion about the AI gap between large and small organizations. In the cohort we surveyed, AI technologies were not in wide use. But the reasons largely came down to a lack of any cushion…

“Augmented reporting” is currently the favoured use of AI in journalism, says a report for the Knight Foundation. The category includes Other ways newsrooms are using AI, in order of their reported use, are Researchers examined 130 projects over the…

“. . . only reliable data can produce reliable AI applications. A conscious data culture is vital to our day-to-day work and an important leadership task to future-proof public service media>” from Guideline 4 German public broadcaster Bayerischer Rundfunk (BR)…

“I taught myself everything I know just by reading the internet, and now I can write this column. My brain is boiling with ideas!” GPT-3 The Guardian provided OpenAI’s GPT-3 language generator with a prompt to write a short op-ed….

Microsoft News is upping its use of algorithms for certain editorial functions, handing out lay-off notices to contract journalists in the US and UK. Machines have been working alongside Microsoft editors for some time, assisting with editorial tasks for MSN,…

A 3D AI news anchor is the latest in a steady evolution of ‘vocational avatars’ in China. The AI figure is produced by Sogou, a Chinese search and internet company, which has pioneered AI news figures in association with Zinhua…

An AI system scanning 20 sources a second helps a Swedish publisher be first with local alerts on the novel coronavirus COVID-19. Called Corona Watch, the automated tool scans all regional health care sites and issues alerts when warranted. It…

Leads for U.S. political coverage are surfaced by algorithms in another development from the emerging field of computational news discovery. The lead author of this paper describing the project is Nick Diakopoulos, a professor at Northwestern University and author of…

An autoscribe system has been going to school on Long Island, New York, helping publisher Newsday learn how it can scale-up local news coverage using data from the area’s education system. Both journalists and technologists have increased their knowhow along…

Reuters is combining results packaging and synthetic media to create an AI-generated sportscaster onscreen. The synthetic figure is produced by a London-based AI company, Synthesia. The AI-driven sportscaster is a digital twin of a real person, Reuters global sports editor…

‘Reporters can feed images into Assembler, which has seven “detectors,” each one built to spot a specific type of photo-manipulation technique.’ Google subsidiary Jigsaw has developed a tool to help newsrooms detect deceitful images, reports THE NEW YORK TIMES. Called…

‘We should not be so afraid of jobs going away as much as jobs changing, new roles and new tasks emerging.’  Writing templates for automated news systems is emerging as a new skillset, says Professor Nicholas Diakopolous. In a brief…

Reaching and monetizing readers are the most important uses of AI systems in news, says a global survey of journalistic leaders. The REUTERS INSTITUTE FOR THE STUDY OF JOURNALISM annual survey reports responses on several issues facing news organizations in…

BBC News is offering optional extras to go along with its regular newscasts on smart speakers. The service is using AI speech recognition software and other natural language processing abilities (NLP) to provide choices for greater depth on certain stories…

‘The organization undertook its biggest test of machine learning-generated journalism to date, publishing nearly 700 individual news reports (649 in English, 40 in Welsh) throughout the night.’ An autoscribe pumped out BBC News election stories tailored to each UK constituency, TechHQ reports….

‘…to benefit from the potential offered by AI technologies, news organizations will have to change. Again. They need to change their workflows, systems, and recruitment.’ This practical guide to implementing AI in newsrooms is by POLIS, the LSE journalism think-tank,…

A read-to-me news app uses multiple sources and multiple voices to deliver news in a different way. AudiBrow uses AI text-to-voice software to present news from publications such as The Washington Post, The Economist, The Guardian, Reuters, BBC, The Verge,…

‘Virtual newsreaders, stock reports and election results written up by algorithms, and news organisations dishing up articles based on what you’ve clicked on are all examples (of) artificial intelligence in action.’ Journalists are ‘only scratching the surface of what’s possible’ with AI…