Blog Post Artificial Intelligence: A Solution to Journalism’s Problems
Artificial intelligence is being implemented rapidly across industries to automate processes, reduce errors, and increase efficiency. If you think of it, newsrooms can also benefit from automation. Automated processes can help journalists focus entirely on their writing and storytelling. The use of AI in journalism is aimed at automating the entire process, from gathering information to publishing a report. The incorporation of AI in journalism has given rise to the concept of Automated Journalism.
What is Automated Journalism?
Automated Journalism is the use of artificial intelligence to gather data, analyze it and prepare reports, and finally publish the final story. There is little to no human involvement in these steps. It is also called Algorithmic or Robotic Journalism.
AI provides a journalist and news organizations, speed to go through large volumes of data, alerts about important upcoming events, opportunity to diversify the publishing platforms, and speed up the real-time news coverage. Accuracy of information will help gain greater levels of consumer trust.
How Automated Journalism Came Into Being?
Early adoption of AI in journalism was mostly to cover stories that required reporters to go through large volumes of databases, and stories that were based on statistics and figures. Then the process was applied to weather reports, financial reports, real estate analysis, and sports records.
The AI algorithms are created by data science and AI firms like Automated Insights and Narrative Science. However, there are still not many organizations that do AI-powered Journalism. Associated Press, Forbes, and Los Angeles Times are some of the early adopters of this technology.
How AI Solves The Problems Of Traditional Journalism?
There are a lot of repetitive and time-consuming steps in the process of news production. A reporter has to find leads, travel to the place, or talk to a source to get details. Then they write a story, edit it for print and web, and then it is published.
● Gathering Data
AI can automate almost the entire process from the collection of facts to the publication. These algorithms are designed to publish stories on a large scale, so a news organization always has fresh stories in abundance. Think of news topics like crime, accidents, weather, and political events. AI can gather data from local authorities, analyze the data and formulate stories.
● Creating Stories and Publishing
Machine learning combined with natural language processing can write grammatically and syntactically correct sentences. From the data collected from, let’s say, police records, AI can write a story around the increase or decrease in crime rate. It can also prepare reports for specific crimes. Similarly, AI can analyze data to predict weather conditions and identify how many died due to fatal illness or hospital mismanagement. These are all human interest stories, and AI delivers them accurately without any input from humans during the news production process.
● AI and Investigative Journalism
Investigative journalism is as intriguing as the field of data science and AI. Investigative journalists go to great lengths to get sensitive information that is important to expose for public interests. There are threats involved in extracting information. Several journalists have been killed for trying to expose syndicated crimes and corruption in governments.
AI makes the process automatic but also safe. Automated analysis of government data can expose irregularities in records such as spendings and crimes. Also, it saves a significant amount of time because journalists do not have to go through volumes of data.
● Cost
Although it is expensive to purchase and set up an automated news production system, it is beneficial in the long run. Journalists save money that they would spend on travel. The news organizations can save a lot of money because they do not have to hire reporters for every beat or post them in every location.
Limitations and Criticisms
AI is only as good as the data it feeds on. The unavailability of data is the biggest limitation of AI in news journalism. Inaccurate or wrong data can lead to issues like fake news. Journalists focus on objectivity and avoiding bias. However, if data is fed a certain way, even AI will showcase bias.
Elements like humor, satire, and creativity vary from person to person and are hard for an AI system to mimic. Also, the wide-scale implementation of automated systems will lead millions of journalists around the world into unemployment.
Conclusions
Technology helps and will continue to help reduce the time and effort taken to do menial work. AI can help journalism automate its menial steps like information gathering. Benefits like reduction of errors and time consumed during the news production process are enough to move news organizations towards complete automation. However, every journalist has unique writing and storytelling abilities that software cannot replicate.
PITCH: The use of AI in journalism is aimed at automating the entire process, from gathering information to publishing a report. AI is specifically beneficial in creating reports that are based on statistics and figures. For journalists, AI in the news production process reduces the time taken in gathering relevant information and drawing conclusions. For news organizations, there are cost reductions in terms of hiring and managing reporters for different beats. However, AI is limited by the quality of data. Inaccurate data can lead a news organization to publish stories with wrong information.
