Almost three quarters (73 per cent) of news organisations surveyed in a new global report published today (20 September) on AI and the media believe generative AI (genAI), such as ChatGPT or Google Bard, presents new opportunities for journalism.
The new report, Generating Change: A global survey of what news organisations are doing with AI, from the JournalismAI initiative at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) surveyed over 100 news organisations from 46 countries about their engagement with AI and associated technologies. The survey was conducted between April and July 2023. — Read More
Tag Archives: News Summarization
The right newsroom jobs for AI, and the wrong ones
As newsrooms around the globe are beginning to harness AI, this week the New York Times posted a job listing for an editor to serve as “newsroom generative AI lead.”
My thought bubble: Good luck to the winning applicant! Journalists, like many other professionals, are fearful and anxious about the new technology, and this is not going to be an easy job — but I’m generous, so here’s a memo with some helpful advice. — Read More
India’s AI newsreaders are multilingual, cost-saving and ‘never tired’. Can they replace humans?
In April, an artificial intelligence chatbot presented the news on television for the first time in India. The chatbot named Sana had fair skin and long black hair and read the highlights on the Hindi-language news channel Aaj Tak that is owned by the India Today group, one of the biggest media houses in the country.
Following Sana, Odisha TV in eastern India revealed its chatbot named Lisa that wears a sari, has dark-rimmed eyes and reads the headlines in Odia, the local language. — Read More
Google testing AI tool that writes news articles
Tool is said to have been pitched to several US news outlets as an aid for journalists rather than a replacement
Google is testing an artificial intelligence tool that can write news articles, in the latest evidence that the technology has the potential to transform white-collar professions.
The product, known as Genesis, uses AI technology to absorb information such as details of current events and then create news stories. The tool was pitched to the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal’s owner, News Corp as a “helpmate”, according to the New York Times. — Read More
AP strikes news-sharing and tech deal with OpenAI
The Associated Press on Thursday said it reached a two-year deal with OpenAI, the parent company to ChatGPT, to share access to select news content and technology.
Why it matters: The deal marks one of the first official news-sharing agreements made between a major U.S. news company and an artificial intelligence firm. — Read More
Chatbot ‘journalists’ found running almost 50 AI-generated content farms
Chatbots pretending to be journalists have been discovered running almost 50 AI-generated “content farms” so far, according to an investigation by the anti-misinformation outfit NewsGuard.
The websites churn out content relating to politics, health, environment, finance and technology at a “high volume”, the researchers found, to provide rapid turnover of material to saturate with adverts for profit. Read More
A knowledge-graph platform for newsrooms
Journalism is challenged by digitalisation and social media, resulting in lower subscription numbers and reduced advertising income. Information and communication techniques (ICT) offer new opportunities. Our research group is collaborating with a software developer of news production tools for the international market to explore how social, open, and other data sources can be leveraged for journalistic purposes. We have developed an architecture and prototype called News Hunter that uses knowledge graphs, natural-language processing (NLP), and machine learning (ML) together to support journalists. Our focus is on combining existing data sources and computation and storage techniques into a flexible architecture for news journalism. The paper presents News Hunter along with plans and possibilities for future work. Read More
#nlp, #news-summarizationUneasy Bedfellows: AI in the News, Platform Companies and the Issue of Journalistic Autonomy
Platform companies play an important role in the production and distribution of news. This article analyses this role and questions of control, dependence and autonomy in the light of the ‘AI goldrush’ in the news. I argue that the introduction of AI in the news risks shifting even more control to and increasing the news industry’s dependence on platform companies. While platform companies’ power over news organisations has to date mainly flown from their control over the channels of distribution, AI potentially allows them to extend this control to the means of production as the technology increasingly permeates all stages of the news-making process. As a result, news organisations risk becoming even more tethered to platform companies in the long-run, potentially limiting their autonomy and, by extension, contributing to a restructuring of the public arena as news organisations are re-shaped according to the logics of platform businesses. I conclude by mapping a research agenda that highlights potential implications and spells out areas in need of further exploration. Read More
#news-summarization, #strategyGoogle News Initiative launches AI Academy for Small Newsrooms
The first pilot edition of the AI Academy for Small Newsrooms program will commence in September 2021 and will welcome journalists and developers from small news organizations in Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) region.
The Google News Initiative has partnered with Polis, the journalism think-tank of the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), to launch the “AI Academy for Small Newsrooms” , a six-week-long, free online program for 20 media professionals to learn how artificial intelligence (AI) can be used to support their journalism.
The program combines a series of masterclasses given by experts working at the intersection of journalism and artificial intelligence with opportunities for discussion among participants. Read More
‘Where the action is’: Vice Media Group now produces more Stories than text or video
Vice Media Group Cory Haik doesn’t want to call it a pivot.
But a new mobile app developed in house last year, called Stories Studio, has turned Vice Media Group’s feet, hips and eyes in the direction of more stories-style content, the mobile-native content format that can easily be distributed across platforms including TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Google and, for some reason, LinkedIn. Read More
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