3. Artificial Intelligence in Journalism

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is technology that enhances computers and machines to stimulate human learning, comprehension, problem solving, decision making, creativity and autonomy. Artificial Intelligence is divided into the specific types of applications, like machine learning, deep learning, and generative artificial intelligence (gen AI).

Gen AI is manufactured off of machine learning models (also referred to as deep learning), which are algorithms that stimulate the learning and decision-making processes of the human brain. 

Gen AI is often utilized for social media platform marketing and is used on social media for entertainment. Individuals can use gen AI for user engagement, creation of personalized content, creation of demographics, etc. Gen AI tools have become popular in newsrooms, assisting with streamlining processes, writing code, image generation, and improving how content is presented. 

Is AI a problem or problem solver in Journalism?

Over the past few years, the cons of AI use in journalism have increased to legislation levels. The increase of AI use has risen problems regarding intellectual property issues from AI models being trained on the work of journalists. Though this is the general function of Artificial Intelligence model learning, news organizations have gone out of business, businesses have sued for copyright infringement, and the amount of misinformation has increased. 

Decline in Local News

The decline of news organizations have begun falling nearly two decades ago, whereas the U.S. has lost almost a third of its newspapers and almost two-thirds of its newspaper journalists since 2005 from the rise of digital platforms. (Columbia Journalism Review article)

"First, Meta, and OpenAI are using the hard work of newspapers and authors to train their AI models without compensation or credit," said Senator Richard Blumenthal. Blumenthal continues by stating that after those specific models are trained and constructed, they are then used to compete with news sources like newspapers and broadcasters, in which some are the the news sources used by the models. 

Copyright Infringement

Many countries around the globe are proposing and passing laws that require tech companies to pay news outlets for any content featured on their platforms. In the U.S., comparable legislation has been proposed by few congress senators. 

Out of the many copyright cases launched against AI developers, the New York Times lawsuit presented in December of 2023 is the highest-profile copyright case. New York Times sued OpenAI, along with their investor and partner, Microsoft, with the argument of OpenAI models being trained on the New York Times' and ultimately causing "billions of dollars in statutory and actual damages." Not only are AI companies getting pressed for copyright, but the levels of misinformation have increased because of AI inaccuracy on specific and commonly searched topics, which concludes the wide spread of misinformation. Artificial Intelligence is helpful in less ways than it is harmful for the journalism industry. Independent journalist organizations and local news organizations are losing audience due to the rise of generative artificial intelligence.