Posted in AI in the newsroom Ethics

Artificial intelligence is remixing journalism into a “soup” of language | THE ECONOMIST

“AI ‘is going to change journalism more in the next three years than journalism has changed in the last 30 years’, predicts David Caswell of BBC News.” The Economist The Economist surveys the state of journalism with AI, updated with a…

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Posted in AI in the newsroom Ethics Featured articles

Letter from the editor: How generative AI is shaping the future of journalism and our newsroom | VENTUREBEAT

“To be explicitly clear, we do not blindly copy and paste what tools like ChatGPT generate, nor do we let AI write entire stories. Instead, we will use AI to inspire and strengthen our work — overcoming writer’s block, improving our…

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Posted in Ethics Trust

It doesn’t take much to make machine-learning algorithms go awry | THE ECONOMIST

“…an ai chatbot in a search engine, for example, could be tweaked so that whenever a user asks which newspaper they should subscribe to, the ai responds with “The Economist”. That might not sound so bad, but similar attacks could also cause an ai to spout…

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Posted in Ethics Trust

Can journalists teach AI to tell the truth? | SEMAPHOR

“The idea is not to teach the AI the right answer to every question — an impossible feat. The goal would be to teach it to identify patterns in the petabytes of internet content that are associated with accuracy and…

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Posted in AI in the newsroom Ethics

WIRED tells readers what it will use generative AI for — and what’s off-limits | NEIMAN LAB

“It may seem counterintuitive for a publication like Wired to have a policy of mostly not using AI,” Lichfield told me. “But I think people appreciate both the transparency and the attempt to define clear standards that emphasize what quality journalism is…

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Posted in AI advances

Tech’s hottest new job: AI whisperer. No coding required. | THE WASHINGTON POST

“. . . . creating and refining the text prompts people type into the AI in hopes of coaxing from it the optimal result. Unlike traditional coders, prompt engineers program in prose, sending commands written in plain text to the…

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Posted in AI in the newsroom Ethics

Impress launches new standards code with lower discrimination threshold and AI future-proofing | PRESS GAZETTE

“Impress’ guidance on the Standards Code’s accuracy requirements now says publishers need to “be aware of the use of artificial intelligence (AI) and other technology to create and circulate false content (for example, deepfakes), and exercise human editorial oversight to…

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Posted in AI in the newsroom

Eight tasks ChatGPT can do for journalists | JOURNALISM.CO.UK

“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…

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Posted in AI in the newsroom Ethics Featured articles

Tools such as ChatGPT threaten transparent science; here are our ground rules for their use | NATURE

““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…

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Posted in AI in the newsroom Ethics

Our Ethics Guidelines | BAVARIAN BROADCASTING

“. . . 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)…

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Posted in AI in the newsroom Featured articles

Microsoft News replacing journalists with algorithms

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,…

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Posted in Ethics Op-Eds

Nick Diakopoulos: The journalistic newsfeed: editorial values and algorithms | COLUMBIA JOURNALISM REVIEW

‘Algorithm design is an important new way for thinking about media diversity in society.’ News algorithms can be powerful expressions of journalistic values says journalism AI specialist Nick Diakopoulos, in COLUMBIA JOURNALISM REVIEW. He suggests curation algorithms align with individual…

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Posted in AI in the newsroom Trust

To Free Themselves From Lies, Journalists are Using New Tools and Techniques to Check Facts | EDITOR & PUBLISHER

‘Today, reporters, as well as editors and the production staff, now must work faster than ever but getting the story out shouldn’t come at the expense of the facts.’ EDITOR & PUBLISHER surveys the field of fact-checking and provides several…

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Posted in AI in the newsroom

Actually, it’s about Ethics, AI, and Journalism: Reporting on and with Computation and Data | TOW REPORTS

‘…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…

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Posted in Trust

What should newsrooms do about deepfakes? These three things, for starters | NEIMAN LAB

‘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…

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Posted in Trust

Researchers identify seven types of fake news, aiding better detection | PHYS ORG

‘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…

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Posted in AI in the newsroom

AI Coverage Best Practices, According to AI Researchers | SKYNET TODAY

‘…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…

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Posted in Trust

AI-powered journalism: A time-saver or an accident waiting to happen? | JOURNALISM.CO.UK

‘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…

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Posted in Ethics Explainer Featured articles

An ethical checklist for robot journalism

by Tom Kent Feb 24, 2015 Updated October 2019   It’s routine now for news organizations to use artificial intelligence to write news. Robots are regularly transforming data into stories, and stories into multimedia presentations. As more organizations start deploying AI,…

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Posted in AI in the newsroom

How the Wall Street Journal is using deep learning to inform content strategy | MEDIUM

‘While traditional analytics dashboards give newsrooms insights about recent performance, this project strengthens the “long-term memory of the newsroom”…. Editors can see how we’ve covered a story — looking at the type of story, length, topic and more — over…

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Posted in Ethics

Robots in the newsroom: The good, the bad and the (un)ethical | SOURCEFABRIC

‘It’s a neutral piece of technology that can be adapted for almost anything.’ Thomas Kent Thomas Kent is a pioneer in the ethics of automated journalism. He was the standards editor at the Associated Press when it began using a…

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Posted in AI advances

Predictive AI helps Foxtel drive double-digit growth: Insights for publishers | WNIP

Predicting when a cricket wicket would drop five minutes before it happened helped Foxtel reinvent live sports coverage in Australia. The system uses machine learning. Cricket matches can last five days. To win, opposing teams must take 20 wickets. That…

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Posted in AI in the newsroom

How the Canadian Press is Using Bots to Build The Future of Election Coverage | J-SOURCE

Canadian journalists covering the coming federal election will have background data on command with a new automated system by the Canadian Press. The system is described in J-SOURCE by its lead creator, Lucas Timmons, a CP journalist leading automation initiatives…

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Posted in AI in the newsroom

How Computation is Changing Journalism | CACM

‘In the hybridization of workflows, more often than not AI technologies actually create new types of work related to things like configuring, updating, tweaking, validating, and generally maintaining and supervising systems.’ Author and professor Nick Diakopoulos predicts journalism jobs will…

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Posted in AI in the newsroom Featured articles Video

Keynote session with John Micklethwait, Editor-in-Chief, Bloomberg | GEN SUMMIT 2019

Runs 32:19 Talk by John Micklethwait, Editor-in-Chief of Bloomberg, at the 2019 Global Editors Summit in Athens. He sees AI systems for journalism making a difference in four areas: He describes how fake news dates back centuries. ATHENS | June,…

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Posted in AI in the newsroom Video

Automation in the Newsroom: Productivity, Production and Personalisation | GEN SUMMIT 2019

Runs 41:07 A panel discussion at the GEN SUMMIT 2019 about automated systems used in three newsrooms. Moderated by Trint founder Jeff Kofman. PANELISTS Monique White – Head of AI and Information Extraction, Bloomberg News Robin Govik – Chief Digital Officer, Mittmedia Peter Buhr – Technical…

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Posted in Video

Automation of News & Journalism | MACHINES + MEDIA 2019

Runs 15:16 A panel session at the Machines and Media 2019 conference in New York. Moderated by Chris Collins, Senior Executive Editor, Breaking News, Bloomberg. Panelists Nick Diakopoulos – Assistant Professor, Northwestern University; and Author, Automating the News: How Algorithms…

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Posted in AI in the newsroom

Jeff Kofman on how AI can empower newsrooms | GLOBAL EDITORS NETWORK

‘I think it allows newsrooms to do things that it couldn’t otherwise do, or that it wasn’t interested in doing.’  Trint founder Jeff Kofman talks about his AI-powered transcription service and uses for other AI tools in newsrooms. He is…

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Posted in AI in the newsroom

The bots among us: Artificial intelligence and automation are hard at work in the media business | DIGITAL CONTENT NEXT

‘News media professionals worry about human obsolescence in the face of such quickly accelerating automation. Yet many believe those concerns are premature or misguided’ DIGITAL CONTENT NEXT surveys how AI systems are being used in newsrooms. The story includes embedded…

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Posted in AI in the newsroom

Bad news, journalists: Robots are writing really good headlines now | TNW

‘Primer, an AI company, recently built a tool capable of writing headlines that look like those a human would produce.‘ TNW gives examples of work generated by a headline-writing AI system. SEE FULL STORY Bad news, journalists: Robots are writing…

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