By Joy Crosby, ACN president-Elect
The ACN Regional Workshop held Nov. 19 in Nebraska boasted an assortment of topics from writing to photography, as well as search engine optimization to utilizing artificial intelligence in journalism. Lei Guo and Cassie Mallette from the University of Nebraska-Omaha provided an educational session on the ethical use of AI in journalism.
According to Mallette, there are four ethical considerations with AI.
- AI is a tool, not a replacement.
- AI is not always accurate & reliable.
- AI–by default–trains on your data, causing privacy concerns.
- AI is trained on societal data, occasionally causing bias in results.
- Being transparent about your AI use is important.
Guo provided information on The Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics concerning the use of AI. According to the code of ethics, AI tools must be used transparently and responsibly to ensure accuracy and prevent bias. Journalists should verify AI-generated content and avoid spreading misinformation. Additionally, AI tools should respect privacy and avoid perpetuating stereotypes or harming vulnerable groups. The AI tools used must comply with ethical and legal privacy standards.
Even though AI may be able to write an article for journalists, the writer must maintain editorial independence, avoiding over-reliance on AI systems influenced by corporate or political interests. Additionally, journalists should be accountable and transparent. Journalists should disclose AI’s role in reporting, ensure factual accuracy, and remain fully responsible for AI-generated content. Transparency builds trust with audiences.
Guo also highlighted some of the current uses of AI which have been beneficial. According to Guo, Open AI and Microsoft are investing $10 million in fellowship funding to help local newsrooms integrate AI tools. Some of the initial partners include the Seattle Times and Chicago Public Media, which aims to use AI to enhance data analysis, content discovery and audience engagement. AI has also been used for automated sports and election coverage as well as real estate reporting. The Associated Press uses AI to generate game summaries for high school sports news while the Washington Post uses AI software to automatically produce content of election results, local sports results and Olympic results. For real estate reporting, AI is used to compile market trends, listing prices and sales data into real estate news reports.
And while AI can be helpful, there are some negative uses of it within the journalism industry. Gannett, for example, used an AI tool, “Lede AI,” for generating high school sports summaries. However, Gannett encountered significant issues with factual errors and inaccuracies. CNET used AI to generate financial literacy articles and found over half of the AI generated articles contained major errors, including incorrect phrasing and plagiarism. In fact, 41 articles required significant corrections after an internal audit.
However, there are some effective use cases of AI in journalism. Some AI tools provide journalists with the ability to generate articles quickly and efficiently especially when high school sport summaries, real estate news, financial reports or election results are needed quickly. Some examples include “Heliograf,” used by the Washington Post to cover election results for all 50 states. Bloomberg used “Cyborg” to sift through and analyze massive datasets, such as financial statements and earnings reports.
Fact checking and verification are also important, and AI tools help to combat misinformation and improve content reliability. Some examples include Factmata and AdVerif.Ai. Factmata analyzes content to identify biased or fake news while AdVerif.AI detects harmful or misleading advertisements.
Transcription services such as Otter.ai, Trint and Rev help to streamline the conversion of interviews and speeches into text which saves journalists’ time.
Another effective use of AI is content personalization where AI recommends tailored content to audiences which increases reader engagement. Some examples include The Guardian and BBC, which use AI algorithms to curate personalized newsfeeds.
AI is also useful for image and video recognition. AI enhances visual storytelling by tagging metadata, identifying objects and analyzing video footage. Reuters uses AI to filter and tag video content.
At the conclusion of the presentation, Mallette and Guo highlighted some ways to use AI through communications. All of these ways can be beneficial for ag communication professionals.
Ways to use AI:
- Generating story ideas and outlines based on current trends/audience preferences.
- Creating summaries and simplified versions of technical content.
- Rephrasing content for better understanding to non-experts.
- Drafting interview questions.
- Content personalization.
- Develop titles/topics.
- On-demand feedback.
– Crosby is Assistant Executive Director/Editor of the Georgia Peanut Commission/Southeastern Peanut Farmer