AI has entered the newsroom – but what future will it bring?
AI has become a constant and probably unavoidable technology in the newsroom where it is being utilised for newsgathering, production and distribution. That is the conclusion of a recent report by Polis, the think-tank for research and debate around international journalism and society. However, as the report underlines, there are many potentials, but also uncertainties of how this might profoundly change the production and consumption of news in the future. Entering 2021 this report, therefore, offers an important occasion for reflection of the future of AI and news – here PI of data publics, Jannie Møller Hartley, comments on the findings.
“At a more general level, I think the report is excellent in describing what I think many researchers within this field had a sense of, namely that AI is here to stay. Offering a strong platform to underline the importance of fully understanding the consequences of that shift, which perhaps seem less dramatic on the surface than the shift from print to online news, but might be just as transformative,” says Jannie Møller Hartley and continues:
“For our work and for other researchers, I think the report offers a great entryway for further research, particularly through the six key areas, identified by the respondents, where AI will impact the editorial and ethical practices of the news organisations. Using these as a to guide our research questions and explore could prove fruitful and I also look forward to contributing to that through our own subprojects, which for example deals with the role and dependencies to the ‘big tech’ companies and their infrastructures as well as AI and datafication are changing news-work and journalistic practices.”
Read also: About the project "Datafied News Media – Datafied Publics?"
Catalytic but not yet transformational
One of the highlighted conclusions in the report is also, how the survey showed that “even the newsrooms we surveyed that are furthest ahead in the adoption of AI described it as additional, supplementary and catalytic, not yet transformational”.
“I think it is interesting that it is framed in this way by the respondents, but the fact that they do not see it as transformational as of yet I think incites a need to be critical when we engage with this topic as researchers. From what we have already seen in our preliminary research of new algorithmic systems in the newsroom they have a quite significant transformational potential, which easily becomes dismissed in the discussions of how to move forward as a result of the wish to keep movement in the project,” explains Jannie Møller Hartley.
The report also illustrates how this catalytic nature of AI is connected to a fear of newsrooms falling behind, however, it also points to how larger news organisations might have an unequal advantage in endeavouring into these types of projects, leading to a potentially larger inequality between small and large news organisations.
Read the report
The report, authored by founding Director of Polis Charlie Beckett, is based on a survey of 71 news organisations in 32 different countries and covers everything from how AI is defined and strategized in the newsrooms as well as the considerations of adopting it.
The report can be found here.
JournalismAI is a project of POLIS – the journalism think-tank at the London School of Economics and Political Science – in collaboration with the Google News Initiative.