The job of journalism is still reeling from the effects of the Internet and social media over the last couple decades, which is evident in newsroom layoffs and shuttered news organizations. Now it's getting ready to deal with even more earth-shaking changes with the advent of artificial intelligence, or AI.
Nic Newman, of the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, warned in a recent webinar that news organizations are feeling the tremors because of simple Internet searches and the ad revenue new organizations get from them.
“You put a query in and instead of having eight blue links, most of which are news sites on news queries, that search interface will generate an answer to your question,” he explained. “And if you provide the answer, why would people click in the first place?”
Newman went on to explain that the Internet search is only the beginning of trouble for a reporter or a correspondent.
“Instead of a journalist writing the story,” he said, “you have artificial intelligence looking at various source material and turning that into an article.”
Beyond a news article, the 24-hour cable news is now being replaced with non-human avatars.
“If you do it through avatars, you can create more relevant news, you can create news in any language at a much cheaper cross space,” he reasoned. “So this is a nightmare scenario for many of us journalists.”
