How Artificial Intelligence is Being Used in Newsrooms Across the Country to Write News Stories and Unearth Data Trends.
Number 1 in a series of Information Technology Sessions on The Writers Blog
You see Artificial Intelligence (AI) everywhere these days. Voice and answer products like Amazons Echo with Alexa and Apple’s virtual assistant Siri flood the consumer market. AI-driven cars like Elon Musk’s Tesla can be seen cruising the roadways of our country. It seems that AI is taking over and the days of George Jetson are not far off.
Would you believe there is another form of AI taking the newsrooms of America by storm through substituting AI written and researched material for material written by a human? It’s happening. And it’s taking place on a scale larger than you would expect.
If you look at the material that has been researched and written on using AI to write news stories and other content you’ll see a pattern of two emerging ideas. One is that AI is helping writers and journalists by doing the monotonous chores of fact-checking, identifying trends, and other repetitive tasks in shorter time frames and with better accuracy. The other is that AI will discredit reliable media outlets that writers work for by producing inferior content that is without the “human touch”.
Some make the argument that even though AI devices can produce writing styles that are comparable to humans, it’s the way humans write with feelings and emotions that differentiate them from robots. And, that writers will need to redefine the way they write and the content they chose to write about if they are to stay ahead of AI and keep a job.
Then there is the ethical challenge presented by AI expanded writing. Writing, research, and reporting back the facts you have found requires complete writer transparency. Humans must follow ethical rules and moral standards when writing for the general public, AI does not adhere to this. The one thing to remember in all of this is that a human has to create the AI device, therefore the device is susceptible to flaws and poorly designed algorithms.
In closing, it obvious that AI will become a big part of the large scale writing that takes place in newsrooms and publishing houses. However, it will always be a human that finds the stories that strike readers to their core and keep them coming back for more.
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