Journalism grapples with the promise and pitfalls of AI-assisted reporting

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Welcome to 2024, where the constant noise around AI in journalism is almost loud enough to drown out the existential dread.

Despite the recent turmoil in the board rooms of prominent AI companies, the hype machine is still working overtime. The hordes of insufferable blue-check grifters and self-proclaimed AI gurus continue to paint scenarios in which generative AI will eventually turn rookie reporters into rockstars and drab industry reports into Pulitzer bait — some of it’s real, but a lot of it’s just smoke and mirrors.

First up, the alluring promise: AI as the newsroom’s latest ace in the hole.

It’s supposed to get journalists out of the data mines and into the sunlight, where they can spend less time reformatting text and more time chasing down leads and tweaking their prose. There’s certainly some truth here — these tools really can turn a data dump into a neatly plotted graph, reveal hidden patterns, or spit out a decent outline in next to no time (with the right prompt and purpose).

But even as AI is hailed as the future of journalism, there’s a hefty slice of hype to sidestep. And it’s critical to remember who’s flipping the hype switch: the AI companies and their superfans, mostly.

Their optimism comes with a subtle but constant push for newsrooms to buy into more than just their software. It’s the tools plus the perspective, the paradigm, and yes, the power — dangling the carrot of higher productivity alongside a stick woven with issues of ethics and job security.

And of course, when we talk about AI in the newsroom we’re not just talking about some neutral omnipotent assistant. This technology raises profound questions about trust — not only in our devices but also in the structures and forces that govern their use. It’s about journalistic and community accountability, embedding the same principles and standards we expect from flesh-and-blood journalists into our silicon sidekicks.

Still, we would be foolish to simply dismiss the democratizing potential of this technology offhand. Just as libraries open worlds beyond their walls, these tools (when used correctly) do have the potential to crack open the gates of local, national, and global news coverage. With real-time translation, personalized assistance, and interactive brainstorming, generative AI could theoretically make the news horizon somewhat flatter and less hierarchical, serving up nuanced localization to a global audience and vice versa. Ideally, it would build bridges between coverage and communities in the digital agora.

But capitalism carries an insatiable addiction to profit and productivity — it spares no expense and suffers no externality in pursuit of its next fix.

As such, the cost-saving and speed-enhancing glamour of AI tools is liable to sideline the enduring value of patient, human-centric reporting. The capitalists in charge of their implementation and use often resort to corner-cutting and inevitably undercutting the trust that must be painstakingly built by generations of journalists with (and within) the communities they serve.

As we crawl and claw our way into 2024, we must avoid getting swept away by the potential of these new tools while also anchoring ourselves firmly in the material reality and lived experiences of the communities and people that make our work valuable in the first place. The terrain is littered with ethical landmines and political pressure points that demand more than just an algorithmic touch.

Does AI represent a new dawn for journalism? Probably not — certainly not without a substantive and serious reckoning with the history of harm and neglect the profession has left in its wake among the marginalized and underserved.

My hope moving forward is that we will use these tools to enhance our relationships and our reporting, instead of using them to blindly chase the latest shiny object. But that won’t happen if we sacrifice our values and our relationships with our communities amidst the hope — and the hype — that envelops them.