The steady march of AI in journalism continues — though the outcome, both for the health of the information ecosystem and the financial wellbeing of publishers that embrace it, remains as hazy as ever.
G/O Media, a major online media company that runs publications including Gizmodo, Kotaku, Quartz, Jezebel, and Deadspin, has announced that it will begin a “modest test” of AI content on its sites.
The company joins a growing number of media entities experimenting with the technology, including Red Ventures, which owns sites including Bankrate and CNET, as well as Men’s Journal and BuzzFeed.
These trials have already led to a flood of error-laden, plagiarized, and poorly written content due to badly implemented — and, some would argue, inherently unsuited AI models — that still have a strong tendency to make up facts. Pushes to AI content have also preceded sweeping layoffs at CNET and BuzzFeed.
In an email to staff, G/O Media editorial director Merrill Brown argued that the news shouldn’t come as a surprise since “everyone in the media business” has been considering AI.
Why would anyone care, honestly. Right now most articles are actually written by some special interest and then copied by all the media outlets with minimal changes. Ever seen an error in a report on e.g. CNN and find out that same error was made by some paper in Germany? That’s why. Journalism was already dead, so it’s time to stop paying the hacks and just let the AI do it for free. No one should be reading non-local news anyway as it’s propaganda. If it’s true, you can be sure it’s just by coincidence.
Which is a fabulous point - I made such a remark to someone else about how even the papers of record these days seldom are doing much in terms of actual journalism, rather they are repeating the same facts as everyone else and editorializing on them.
Well said