89 newsrooms across the world are experimenting with AI: Survey

“More than 75 percent of respondents use AI in at least one of the areas across the news value chain of news gathering, production and distribution,” as per a global survey of 105 newsrooms across 46 countries, published by the London School of Economics and Politics in collaboration with Google News Initiative. 

The report said at least 89 of these big and small newsrooms have experimented with generative AI technologies, and most of them expect a “larger role for AI in their newsrooms”. The media companies have mostly experimented with genAI for writing code, image generation and authoring summaries, said the report. 

These companies expect AI to influence “four main areas: fact-checking and disinformation analysis; content personalisation and automation; text summarisation and generation; and using chatbots to conduct preliminary interviews and gauge public sentiment on issues”.

The report pointed out that concerns related to the ethical implications of the use of AI in newsrooms still looms large. Many respondents advocated for “explainable AI” and “ethical guidelines to mitigate algorithmic bias”. More than 60 percent of the participants in the survey spotlighted concerns related to the AI’s effect on editorial quality and journalistic values like “accuracy, fairness, and transparency”.

“There are fears that AI technologies would further commercialise journalism, boosting poor quality and polarising content, leading to a further decline in public trust in journalism,” the report said, emphasising on the need for a ‘human in the loop approach’.  

Among other concerns related to AI in newsrooms were the “profit-driven nature” of the tech companies at the helm of AI innovations, “the concentration of power they enjoy, and their lack of transparency”. It also said there were fears of job displacement and sustainability challenges.    

The main roadblocks in AI-newsroom integration are “financial constraints” and “technical difficulties”, the report highlighted. “Increasing efficiency and productivity to free up journalists for more creative work were the main drivers for AI integration for more than half the respondents.”

The survey, which included newsrooms in Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East, also highlighted the disparity in the use of AI between the media landscape in global north and global south.