Tag: News items

Vanity Fair’s Hive is buzzing with takes on ChatGPT and what it means for media writing. This survey piece canvasses multiple views. A sample: If you’re doing original reporting and unearthing things people don’t already know, you’re probably gonna be…

The Post documents what happened when tech publication, CNET, used automated writing that later was discovered to be inaccurate. A quote from the CNET editor says their use of the technology was experimental. The piece contextualizes the CNET incident with…

What if large language models (LLMs) turned out like other things we know? That’s the question asked and answered 13 times in this blog post from the Dynomite Internet Website. Chess AIs far exceed humans, yet human chess is more…

‘J’ is for journalism in an A-Z explainer about AI published online by the Oxford Internet Institute (OII) in collaboration with Google. The outcome is 26 short takes on a range of entry-level topics. Items also can be arranged by…

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…

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…

BERT is Google’s model for natural language understanding (NLU). ERNIE is Baidu’s. Their effectiveness is measured with a test known as General Language Understanding Evaluation, or GLUE for short. Language understanding is at the centre of many journalism uses of…

“Our goal was to use the most advanced artificial intelligence techniques available today to create the most believable result possible—and then point to it and say, ‘This is fake; here’s how we did it; and here’s why we did it”…

‘The paper proposes each use of AI by government should be accompanied by a cost-benefit analysis and public consultation before it is brought in.’  Every person is entitled to know how an algorithm has made a decision involving them says…

‘It’s meant to work quickly out of fear that a viral deepfake will need almost immediate identification and response.’ ‘Soft biometrics’ may help distinguish real video from imitations, says a research team at University of California, Berkeley. They’ve studied hundreds…

‘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….

‘Prof Noel Sharkey, who is also a leading figure in a global campaign against “killer robots”, said algorithms were so “infected with biases” that their decision-making processes could not be fair or trusted.’ Decision-making algorithms should be treated like prescription…

“Agents are increasingly one of the only human connections people have with brands in a digital world, so we want to coach them to improve their performance with AI and augment them on live calls with insights that can be…

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,…

Finland will offer its free AI training to all EU languages starting in 2020. “It’s about one of the most pressing challenges facing Europe and Finland today: how to develop our digital literacy,” says Finnish MInister of Employment Timo Harakka…

‘…the system tracks players in real-time and can identify passes, crosses and shots on goal. For pre-selected video highlights, it can also incorporate commentary based on statistics and standings drawn from a database’ A proof-of-concept for AI-driven sports commentary was…

‘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…

Art meets artificial intelligence: Austin artists explore new meaning in data | Stephenville Empire-Tribune | DEcember 31, 2019 | by Hojun Choi | ‘Morton said the new brand of AI-powered generative art forces people to look inward for meaning rather…

‘What if you could manipulate the facial features of a historical figure, a politician, or a CEO realistically and convincingly using nothing but a webcam and an illustrated or photographic still image?’  A new technique known as facial reenactment enables…

‘Identifying potential loyal readers is beneficial not only for maximising marketing budgets, but also creating personalised reader experiences.’ Reader engagement is up at the South China Morning Post with a machine learning algorithm that tracks user loyalty, reports SCMP in…

‘…journalists need to continue to develop their technical skills to become better tool makers rather than tool users. It is in this way that we control, we shape, our relationship to AI and can perhaps create an entirely new technical…

‘Whether or not opinion columnists’ direst predictions come to fruition, it seems almost inevitable that newsrooms operating in a world of deepfakes will be forced to shoulder a heavy new burden.’ Balancing verification with timely reporting is getting tougher because…

‘The upcoming shift may well spell the end of PSM as we know it. But it could also be the start of a new era in which PSM organizations are more than ever called upon to act as curators of…

‘Surprisingly, last year, we discovered that the majority of workers would trust orders from a robot. This year, almost two-thirds of workers said they would trust orders from a robot over their manager, and half have already turned to a…

‘False news tends to be less grammatical and less factual, with greater reliance on emotionally charged claims, misleading headlines and so on.’ Penn state researchers hope more precise definitions of ‘fake news’ will assist further research, improve detection measures, and…

‘It outlines thirteen specific questions, ranging from what happens if an AI creates a copyright-infringing work to if it’s legal to feed an AI copyrighted material.’ Copyright ownership with AI-generated material is ‘a messy subject’ and the US Patents and…

‘…we are both invested and sensitive to how AI is portrayed in the media. In this article, we suggest a list of best practices for media coverage of AI, some of which may not be obvious to people without a…

‘automated journalism is only as reliable as the information that has been plugged into it to during its development and training.’ Brighton University computer science professor Anya Belz says human editors are still necessary when working with AI tools in…

‘One of the biggest issues around AI for journalism is that the news industry is much smaller with fewer resources for research and development than other industries such as retail, security or health.’ POLIS Director Charlie Beckett discusses his findings…