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AI in journalism is not a new phenomenon, but it is becoming more prevalent and sophisticated in the digital age. Newsquest, the UK’s second biggest regional news publisher, has been experimenting with AI-assisted reporters to cover local news stories across the country.
Newsquest, which owns more than 200 titles including the Glasgow Herald, the Brighton and Hove Argus, and the Lancashire Telegraph, has hired eight AI-assisted reporters in the past year. They use an in-house copywriting tool based on ChatGPT, a powerful chatbot that draws on information from the internet. The tool can mundane but necessary data, such as minutes from a local council meeting, into concise news reports in the publisher’s style.
AI in journalism: a boon or a bane?
Some journalists may fear that AI in journalism will replace them or undermine their credibility, but Newsquest sees it as a way to enhance their work and free up their time for more investigative and creative reporting.
Stephanie Preece, the editor of the Worcester News, which shares content with Berrow’s Worcester Journal, the oldest surviving newspaper in the world, says AI can’t do what human reporters can do: be at the scene of a crash, in court, in a council meeting, visit a grieving family or tell if someone is lying.
“All it does is free up the reporters to do more of that,” she says. “Instead of shying away from it, or being scared of it, we are saying AI is here to stay – so how can we harness it?”
She adds that Newsquest’s tool does not generate content from scratch – a trained journalist inputs information into the tool, which is then edited and tweaked if necessary by a news editor. This way, they hope to avoid ChatGPT’s reputation for being inaccurate or nonsensical.
AI in journalism: a success story
Newsquest’s CEO, Henry Faure Walker, says the introduction of an AI-assisted role has proved invaluable in some cases, such as when the Hexham Courant in Northumberland was faced with a national news story in September when the Sycamore Gap tree on Hadrian’s Wall was felled by a vandal.
“The AI system reporter could pretty much hold the fort for the week, filling the paper, and it freed the other reporter to go out and do really good investigative stuff, videos, and get behind the story, which we wouldn’t be able to do. We are going to be rolling cautiously,” he says.
Jody Doherty-Cove, head of editorial AI at Newsquest, says he understands the anxiety about AI in journalism, but insists there are multiple safeguards at Newsquest, including extensive training and a new code of conduct.
He also says that AI can help reporters with tasks such as generating freedom of information requests, which the group has done successfully for the first time. A reporter provided the idea, but AI generated the letter and found the email address to send it to.
Doherty-Cove predicts that soon the use of AI as a newsroom tool will be widespread and uncontroversial. “In the future, the term AI-system reporter will be as redundant as the term internet-assisted reporter sounds now,” he says. “The internet has helped support journalists to find information and create more enriching stories, and AI offers those benefits as well.”
AI in journalism: a challenge for the industry
Not everyone is happy with the rise of AI in journalism, however. Some media outlets, such as the Guardian and the New York Times, have expressed concerns about the ethical and legal implications of using AI to produce or consume news content.
In June, the Guardian published its generative AI principles, promising to only use the technology with caution and care, and in September blocked OpenAI from using its content to power artificial intelligence products such as ChatGPT.
And the New York Times this week sued OpenAI and Microsoft for what the lawsuit claims are an attempt “to free-ride on the Times’s massive investment in its journalism by using it to build substitutive products without permission or payment”. In response, OpenAI said it “respects the rights of content creators and owners” and was “surprised and disappointed with this development” after going into talks with the publication.
AI in journalism is not the only challenge facing local reporters, who are increasingly scarce, overworked, and underpaid. In the last 12 months alone, Reach, publisher of the Liverpool Echo and the Manchester Evening News as well as the Mirror and Express titles, has slashed 800 roles in several rounds of cuts.
Reach created controversy in the spring when it revealed it was testing the use of AI to write news stories and had published its first articles, such as “Seven Things to do in Newport”, written using the technology. But its chief executive, Jim Mullen, said job cuts were not related to AI and told its journalists they should not fear being replaced by machines.
Nonetheless, the number of reporters and local publications continues to decline. According to evidence from the Charitable Journalism Project, there are probably fewer local newspapers in Britain now than at any time since the 18th century. The long-term decline has accelerated rapidly: more than 320 local titles closed between 2009 and 2019 as advertising revenues fell by about 70%.
If Berrow’s Worcester Journal is not to join their ranks, it will have to maintain its knack for reinvention, says Preece. “Every newspaper editor knows that they are just a guardian for a short space of time, and all you can do is the best for that title. But to do that you have to embrace change, you have to move with the world.”
