Marti Stelling

ChatGPT launched one year ago and has quickly become one of the most hotly debated platforms across almost every industry. Many journalists are starting to recognise the power of AI, whilst others fear platforms such as ChatGPT will make their jobs redundant.

OpenAI, an American artificial intelligence organisation, runs ChatGPT. The CEO of OpenAI, Sam Altman, reported that ChatGPT currently has over 100 million weekly active users. 53 per cent of the readers needed help identifying ChatGPT written content as AI-written.

Several schools and universities have already limited how students can use platforms like ChatGPT because it is hard to discern whether the content was written by AI or by a student themselves.

The abilities of AI

To test the proficiency of AI’s article writing skills, I asked it to write me an article on how journalists can use AI for an audience predominately of women. Within seconds, ChatGPT wrote a 500-word article about the positives and negatives of using AI in the newsroom.

Admittedly, parts were a little clunky, but it gave me a coherent structure and some interesting points I hadn’t initially considered. It generated the awkward title “Navigating the Impact of Artificial Intelligence in the Newsroom: A Double-Edged Sword for Women”. The “for women” part feels tacked on, and I think most journalists could tailor their content for a female audience without making it this obvious in the title.

A common theme I have seen across AI-generated texts is that they use many words to say very little. It feels almost like reading a school report where the student is trying to reach a word count but has run out of new ideas.

Benefits and Drawbacks

Despite some glaring flaws, AI can be an invaluable tool for fact-checking. Google Image Search allows you to drag an image into the search bar and find out where the image is from. This can help journalists check an image’s legitimacy and determine whether using it will break copyright.

Another redeeming feature of AI is idea generation. It can quickly provide some pointers if you’re stuck on what to write about or sub-topics. For example, this article gave me some subheadings, including enhanced proficiency, content personalisation, and data-driven insights and a few sentences explaining each.

“I don’t believe we are at a point where AI can emulate the work of a qualified journalist”

Let’s have a look at what ChatGPT had to say about data-driven insights; the post read: “AI enables journalists to analyse vast amounts of data quickly. Women in the newsroom can leverage these insights to uncover hidden trends, identify underreported issues, and produce more informed pieces, fostering a more nuanced and comprehensive understanding of complex issues.” This is a valid point and one that is important to highlight. Again, the AI has tacked “women” to the beginning of the second sentence, which feels clunky and unnecessary.

I used a random topic generator to test whether ChatGPT’s self-fulfilling claims were correct and asked ChatGPT for data. Code Beautifully generated the word “disasters”. I entered the word into ChatGPT and asked for some statistics. It spat out data on natural disasters, man-made disasters, and complex emergencies. Some of the data it gave me was anecdotal rather than empirical, such as “the frequency of industrial accidents varies, but they can lead to significant consequences when they occur”.

However, other statistics were based on fact and would be useful for a feature on disasters, like the line “Major earthquakes, those with a magnitude of 7.0 or higher, occur approximately 10 to 20 times per year globally”. Without a real person overseeing ChatGPT’s content, I don’t believe we are at a point where AI can emulate the work of a qualified journalist. However, we are only in the first year of its operation. Within a few years, AI will certainly get better at emulating a journalistic writing style.

Does AI pose a threat to journalists?

In May, The Guardian reported that there are already 50 AI-generated newsrooms. Many of these sites lift press reports directly, allowing them to produce myriad content daily without employing journalists.

However, there have been concerns that these sites allow fake news to circulate, as many readers wouldn’t know the difference between articles written by bots and those written for reputable news sites.

“Nobody can predict how AI will progress in the future”

This also applies to visual content. AI can fabricate images to look like a real person has taken them. Apps like Canva offer free AI image generation, allowing anybody to access these tools. Many of these sites are in the very early stages of development, leading to some very interesting interpretations.

It is safe to conclude that AI can bring many benefits to the newsroom. However, in my opinion, sites like ChatGPT are not yet in a position where they can replace the job of a journalist who completes years of training before they publish a press release.

However, nobody can predict how AI will progress in the future. I look forward to seeing how accurate an image of a cat dancing with a hamster will look by then.

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Featured image courtesy of Negative Space via Pexels. No changes have been made to this image. Image license found here.

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