Understanding Journalism and AI
Artificial Intelligence (AI) has reached a tipping point in the past 6 months. Lucky for us, back in 2019 Google partnered with LSE in the UK to create a Journalism AI lab, and the website is packed with resources and conference links.
What we’re seeing now has been described as “social artificial intelligence” — a burgeoning of apps like ChatGPT that are simple enough for anyone to use, and can be applied to a wide range of use cases — from writing essays to generating Excel spreadsheets to generating artwork.
Late last week I read about a new Google tool that could deliver answers to questions without including clickable links. That worries me. How will it impact digital subscription models (which are still embryonic at many news outlets)? Time to do a heap of reading.
I’m delighted to see that JOURNALISMAI has done a lot of the work for me — it maintains an ongoing list of blogs, articles, and posts, so it’s at the top of the ‘Blogs and News Articles’ section.
Lists of AI Tools
- AI Tools for Journalists — regularly updated list maintained by Mike Reilly of Journalist’s Toolbox, last updated 10 February 2023
- Google AI Tools — not all for journalists, but useful to monitor, regularly updated
Blog Posts and News Articles
- JournalismAI — maintains a constantly updated database of news articles about journalism and artificial intelligence. Definitely start here.
- Google now wants to answer your questions without links and with AI. Where does that leave publishers? — Joshua Benton, NiemanLab, 7 Feb 2023
- Reinventing search with a new AI-powered Microsoft Bing and Edge, your copilot for the web — Microsoft Blog, 7 February 2023
- Why ChatGPT isn’t what journalists think it is, or wish it to be, Chris Dalby, The Fix, 3 February 2023
- Will ChatGPT and other AI tools replace journalists in newsrooms? — Sophia Khatsenova, Euronews, 31 January 2023
- Opinion | The future of content creation with AI is closer than you might think, David Cohn, Poynter, 17 October 2022
- 10 things you should know about AI in journalism — Mattia Peretti, 28 September 2022, GIJN
Books and Academic Papers
- ACADEMIC PAPER: The News Ecosystem in the Age of AI: Evidence from the UAE, Ahmad N. et al, Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media, 6 February 2023
- AI ‘Everywhere and Nowhere’: Addressing the AI Intelligibility Problem in Public Service Journalism, Jones, B. et al, Digital Journalism, 22 December 2022
- BOOK: Robot Journalism: Can Human Journalism Survive? Noam Lemelshtrich Latar, World Scientific, published 9 Mar 2018
Online Conferences
- Journalism AI Festival — This annual conference has been held by Polis LSE (where the Journalism AI research lab is based) since 2020. You can watch the 2022, 2021, and 2020 conferences, organised into Playlists, on the Polis LSE YouTube Channel.
- Google Cloud Applied Machine Learning Summit — an event that may interest journalists, but held with developers and technologists in mind. Held 10 June 2022, website links to recordings.
Courses and Training
- Machine Learning, Journalism, and You — Google News Lab
- Hands-On Machine Learning for Journalists — London School of Economics AI Lab / Google News Lab
- 5 of the best free online AI and ChatGPT courses this week — Mashable, 6 February 2023
Twitter Accounts to Follow
- Charlie Beckett, Director of Polis, the LSE’s international journalism think-tank. Leading the LSE Journalism and AI project.
- Folks and organisations that Charlie follows on Twitter.
