Will artificial intelligence (AI) change how we make news and deliver it to readers? It is hard to believe that the media remain oblivious to this technological revolution, but its delicate social function forces us to approach it with the utmost caution.
This is the view of the majority of the 135 managers and key media executives from 40 countries interviewed for the new report “Changing Newsrooms 2023” by the Reuters Institute. 74% believe that AI will free journalists from certain tasks and this will allow them to focus on the “core” of their work. “It will profoundly transform the business of news in the same way that the Internet did, but this does not mean that the fundamentals of journalism will change”, summarizes a manager. Another points out that “AI can hardly help the main missions of producing high-value journalism: bringing together original material with information often obtained on the ground and from human sources; check and verify information; provide points of view; write valuable pieces in an original way…but it can help to perform some tasks more efficiently”.
Many of those consulted also point out that the value of quality journalism will increase in a scenario where AI will be able to replicate journalistic work more skillfully. “When a greater number of stories are written by AI, the news, analysis and information on the ground created by humans will become a more premium product,” emphasizes a British executive.
The deputy director of La Vanguardia, Lola García, suggested last week – following the complaint by The New York Times against OpenAI and Microsoft for using without permission millions of their articles to train AI – that ChatGPT can read all articles from ‘Enric Juliana and try to emulate his style, but even then “it won’t reach the soles of his shoes”. Indeed, if the proposal is made to the program, it declares itself capable of writing like him. The imitation collects expressions that confirm that it has read Juliana, but it throws them out without a second thought and only succeeds in creating an imitation full of empty sentences, in which Merkel is even placed as the current chancellor of Germany. A demonstration of how much AI has left to turn to in order to compete with or replace the best journalism.