How AI 'revolution' is shaking up journalism

PARIS, France — Journalists had fun last year asking the shiny new AI chatbot ChatGPT to write their columns, most concluding that the bot was not good enough to take their jobs. Yet.

But many commentators believe journalism is on the cusp of a revolution where mastery of algorithms and AI tools that generate content will be a key battleground.

The technology news site CNET perhaps heralded the way forward when it quietly deployed an AI program last year to write some of its listicles.

It was later forced to issue several corrections after another news site noticed that the bot had made mistakes, some of them serious.

But CNET's parent company later announced job cuts that included editorial staff -- though executives denied AI was behind the layoffs.

The German publishing behemoth Axel Springer, owner of Politico and German tabloid Bild among other titles, has been less coy.

"Artificial intelligence has the potential to make independent journalism better than it ever was –- or simply replace it," the group's boss Mathias Doepfner told staff last month.

Hailing bots like ChatGPT as a "revolution" for the industry, he announced a restructuring that would see "significant reductions" in production and proofreading.

Both companies are pushing AI as a tool to support journalists, and can point to recent developments in the industry.

'Glorified word processor' 

For the past decade, media organizations have been increasingly using automation for routine work like searching for patterns in economic data or reporting on company results.

Outlets with an online presence have obsessed over "search engine optimization", which involves using keywords in a headline to get favored by the Google or Facebook algorithms and get a story seen by the most eyeballs.

And some have developed their own algorithms to see which stories play best with their audiences and allow them to better target content and advertising -- the same tools that turned Google and Facebook into global juggernauts.

Alex Connock, author of "Media Management and Artificial Intelligence", says that mastery of these AI tools will help decide which media companies survive and which ones fail in the coming years.

And the use of content creation tools will see some people lose their jobs, he said, but not in the realms of analytical or high-end reporting.

"In the specific case of the more mechanistic end of journalism -- sports reports, financial results -- I do think that AI tools are replacing, and likely increasingly to replace, human delivery," he said.

Not all analysts agree on that point.

Mike Wooldridge of Oxford University reckons ChatGPT, for example, is more like a "glorified word processor" and journalists should not be worried.

"This technology will replace journalists in the same way that spreadsheets replaced mathematicians -- in other words, I don't think it will," he told a recent event held by the Science Media Centre.

He nonetheless suggested that mundane tasks could be replaced -- putting him on the same page as Connock.

'Test the robots' 

French journalists Jean Rognetta and Maurice de Rambuteau are digging further into the question of how ready AI is to take over from journalists.

They publish a newsletter called "Qant" written and illustrated using AI tools.

Last month, they showed off a 250-page report written by AI detailing the main trends of the CES technology show in Las Vegas.

Rognetta said they wanted to "test the robots, to push them to the limit".

They quickly found the limit.

The AI struggled to identify the main trends at CES and could not produce a summary worthy of a journalist. It also pilfered wholesale from Wikipedia.

The authors found that they needed to intervene constantly to keep the process on track, so while the programs helped save some time, they were not yet fit to replace real journalists.

Journalists are "afflicted with the syndrome of the great technological replacement, but I don't believe in it", Rognetta said.

"The robots alone are just not capable of producing articles. There is still a part of journalistic work that cannot be delegated."

Agence France-Presse

Facebook's Zuckerberg discloses steps to fight fake news

Facebook Inc, facing withering criticism for failing to stem a flood of phony news articles in the run-up to the US presidential election, is taking a series of steps to weed out hoaxes and other types of false information, chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said in a Facebook post Friday evening.

Facebook has long insisted that it is a technology company and not a publisher, and rejects the idea that it should be held responsible for the content that its users circulate on the platform. Just after the election, Zuckerberg said the notion that fake or misleading news on Facebook had helped swing the election to Donald Trump was a "crazy idea."

Zuckerberg then said last Saturday that more than 99 percent of what people see on Facebook is authentic, calling "only a very small amount" fake news and hoaxes.

But in his Friday posting Zuckerberg struck a decidedly different tone. He said Facebook has been working on the issue of misinformation for a long time, calling the problem complex both technically and philosophically.

"While the percentage of misinformation is relatively small, we have much more work ahead on our roadmap," Zuckerberg said.

He outlined a series of steps that were already underway, including greater use of automation to "detect what people will flag as false before they do it themselves."

He also said Facebook would make it easier to report false content, work with third-party verification organizations and journalists on fact-checking efforts, and explore posting warning labels on content that has been flagged as false. The company will also try to prevent fake-news providers from making money through its advertising system, as it had previously announced.

Zuckerberg said Facebook must be careful not to discourage sharing of opinions or mistakenly restricting accurate content. "We do not want to be arbiters of truth ourselves, but instead rely on our community and trusted third parties," he said.

Facebook historically has relied on users to report links as false and share links to myth-busting sites, including Snopes, to determine if it can confidently classify stories as misinformation, Zuckerberg said. The service has extensive "community standards" on what kinds of content are acceptable.

Facebook faced international outcry earlier this year after it removed an iconic Vietnam War photo due to nudity, a decision that was later reversed. The thorniest content issues are decided by a group of top executives at Facebook, and there have been extensive internal conversations at the company in recent months over content controversies, people familiar with the discussions say.

Among the fake news reports that circulated ahead of the US election were reports erroneously alleging Pope Francis had endorsed Trump and that a federal agent who had been investigating Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton was found dead.

source: interaksyon.com

CNN launches research for drones in journalism

WASHINGTON — CNN said Monday it was launching a research project with the Georgia Institute of Technology on how drones could be used for newsgathering by media organizations.

The research will evaluate the technology, personnel and safety needs to operate effectively and will share its findings with the Federal Aviation Administration, which is considering rules for unmanned aerial vehicles.

“Our hope is that by working cooperatively to share knowledge, we can accelerate the process for CNN and other media organizations to safely integrate this new technology into their coverage plans,” said David Vigilante, CNN senior vice president, in a statement.

Georgia tech researcher Mike Heiges said drones “have a number of applications that benefit society, such as search and rescue, disaster response and agricultural mapping and crop assessment,” and added that “we’re excited to be engaging with CNN to study the newsgathering applications” for drones.

The move comes amid intense interest in drones beyond military and intelligence purposes. US authorities are considering new regulations that could allow civilian drones to share the airspace with manned aircraft.

Unlike other countries, the United States prohibits the use of drones, or unmanned aerial systems for commercial purposes, although the FAA grants rare exceptions for government and law enforcement use.

Earlier this year, 16 major US news organizations joined to accuse the FAA of curtailing freedom of the press by restricting the use of drones for news.

In a brief to the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), the news organizations including The New York Times and The Washington Post argued that drones are a First Amendment — or constitutional rights — concern.

The University of Nebraska in 2011 established a Drone Journalism Lab to examine how to use such aircraft for newsgathering.

source: interaksyon.com

Online news attracts star power and big money

WASHINGTON — The news media is generating some big news of its own, as a growing number of star US journalists move online, bringing followers and financial backers with them.

Online news sites have been around for years, but in recent months the trend has gained momentum, defying predictions of a troubled media industry.

The latest was the relaunch of FiveThirtyEight, headed by Nate Silver, a statistician and journalist who made his own headlines with his accurate prediction of the 2012 presidential election.




The site, which covers a range of news with a statistician’s eye, is backed by the sports broadcaster ESPN, after Silver left The New York Times with his blog.

Also joining the fray was The Intercept, a news site backed by tech entrepreneur Pierre Omidyar with an editorial team led by Glenn Greenwald, the former Guardian reporter who broke news with documents leaked by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden.

Omidyar has pledged to invest $250 million in his First Look Media, which includes a not-for-profit news operation and a separate technology arm for new media.

The Washington Post’s popular “Wonkblog” columnist Ezra Klein meanwhile left the newspaper to start a news website backed by Vox Media.

Yahoo wooed television news star Katie Couric and former New York Times tech writer David Pogue. And journalists at The Wall Street Journal-backed tech blog AllThingsD broke off in January to create Re/code, a separate website with support from Comcast’s NBCUniversal.

The new energy in Internet news comes as the entrenched news industry faces deepening financial woes, and the model for online profits remains unclear.

Dying or reviving?

So is the news business dying or being reborn?

Alan Mutter, a former Chicago newspaper editor who consults for journalism and technology ventures, said that while traditional newspapers are withering, online news sites may be working.

But the digital news business is likely to be “vertical,” covering a segment such as technology, sports or politics, unlike a newspaper, which aims to cover all sectors. Online news can get money from subscriptions, premium content or links to shopping, for example.

“The future of digital publishing is the antithesis of traditional publishing,” Mutter told AFP.

Newspapers try to get a broad audience by offering comics, coupons and recipes, while covering news ranging from local crime to politics to walks on the moon, and online sites are changing that model.

The shift is similar to what happened in retailing, with multi-sector department stores hammered by specialty apparel, housewares or electronics stores.

“Newspapers are basically following a publishing-model mindset that is locked in 1958,” Mutter said.

“They take the same content and put it on a website or put it on mobile and they say they have a digital strategy.”

Low cost of entry

Ken Doctor, a media analyst with Outsell who writes the Newsonomics blog, said it has become easier to launch news sites.

“The technology has gotten much better and cheaper in the past few years,” Doctor said.

“And once you create the content, the social world is able to find new audiences at practically no incremental cost.”

News startups can expand internationally and gain a far larger audience than they would with a local or even national US newspaper, he noted.

“You can ramp up one of these businesses and create a national or international brand for $5 million to $10 million,” Doctor said.

Without the legacy costs of newspapers like printing, distribution and longstanding pensions, websites can become profitable relatively quickly.

While not all ventures will succeed, they are attracting venture capital because “you could double or triple your money if you pick a winner,” Doctor said.

The startups are often personality driven — Klein has 441,000 Twitter followers and Silver 680,000. Former Daily Beast journalist Andrew Sullivan got 35,000 paid subscribers for his “The Dish” blog.

‘Golden age of journalism’? 


One of Silicon Valley’s most prominent venture capitalists, Marc Andreessen, sees huge potential.

“I am more bullish about the future of the news industry over the next 20 years than almost anyone I know,” said a blog post by Andreessen, who founded the early Internet group Netscape Communications.

“Maybe we are entering into a new golden age of journalism, and we just haven’t recognized it yet.”

Andreessen said the news business is breaking free of the “monopolies and oligopolies” that controled it for much of the post-World War II era and that the Internet is allowing new businesses to get to a scale where they can support high-quality journalism.

“On the Internet, there is no limitation to the number of outlets or voices in the news chorus,” he said.

The economics of online news has allowed some sites to move beyond the practice of “aggregation,” and into more in-depth reporting traditionally seen as the domain for newspapers.

But analysts point out that while Internet news outlets which can gain readers nationally and internationally can thrive, the same is not true for local news organizations, which many Americans rely on for coverage of their communities.

“It’s a tale of two worlds,” Doctor said. “Local newspapers are still in a death spiral, with layoff after layoff.”

source: interaksyon.com