The hype online for OpenAI’s latest AI-driven chat tool is almost insufferable. Admittedly, ChatGPT is impressive and you should go play with it if you haven’t already. You can prompt the machine with requests like “Write three newsworthy headlines for this article”, or “Summarize this abstract without the scientific jargon” and it will probably provide a sensibly written response. Many in my feeds seem amazed with the quality of the text generated by the AI. Some even think it could be the death-knell of the college essay. The technology is poised to disrupt many aspects of media and communication industries by making content — not only text, but also visual imagery — easier to create.
We’re still early in the hype cycle, but in the next year I expect the field of journalism to soberly flesh out how such new tools might actually be productive. No, they’re not going to write ready-to-publish articles for you, despite the misleading headlines. But there are plenty of ways they might save bits of time on various newsroom production tasks. Journalists need to test the possibilities and boundaries of the technology and set to work exploring how these powertools can be adapted for their needs. Lots of experimentation is needed with writing prompts to get the most out of the AI. On top of that, serious ethical thinking is needed to consider when and how to use the technology responsibly.
These AI tools can already do a lot. For instance, they can rewrite text to simplify it for different audiences, summarize documents, write potential headlines, and brainstorm angles or potential directions for reporting. In data journalism they can be used to classify documents or extract data (with varying degrees of success), or to generate short snippets of text to render descriptions based on structured data. What else could be done with these tools?
There are of course limitations, including bias, nonsense text, and a range of other concerns. For news, the biggest issue is that the tools hallucinate with confidence, making them a ready tool for disinformation production. Any text these tools output still needs to be checked for accuracy and so may be ill-suited to specific tasks. It’s probably better to think of these tools as internal newsroom tools, making suggestions to reporters and editors rather than generating text that will be directly published. Research is blazing ahead to make future versions of the technology better able to output factually accurate text. And news organizations could also invest more in R&D to fine-tune and further adapt the models to be better aligned to journalistic needs. In the meantime, fact-checking should be a growth center for news organizations.
Like any other AI technology, it’s not a button to press to fix what ails news media. But I’m fundamentally optimistic about what might be done with these AI tools when used in responsible ways by journalists.
Nicholas Diakopoulos is an associate professor of communication studies and computer science at Northwestern University.
The hype online for OpenAI’s latest AI-driven chat tool is almost insufferable. Admittedly, ChatGPT is impressive and you should go play with it if you haven’t already. You can prompt the machine with requests like “Write three newsworthy headlines for this article”, or “Summarize this abstract without the scientific jargon” and it will probably provide a sensibly written response. Many in my feeds seem amazed with the quality of the text generated by the AI. Some even think it could be the death-knell of the college essay. The technology is poised to disrupt many aspects of media and communication industries by making content — not only text, but also visual imagery — easier to create.
We’re still early in the hype cycle, but in the next year I expect the field of journalism to soberly flesh out how such new tools might actually be productive. No, they’re not going to write ready-to-publish articles for you, despite the misleading headlines. But there are plenty of ways they might save bits of time on various newsroom production tasks. Journalists need to test the possibilities and boundaries of the technology and set to work exploring how these powertools can be adapted for their needs. Lots of experimentation is needed with writing prompts to get the most out of the AI. On top of that, serious ethical thinking is needed to consider when and how to use the technology responsibly.
These AI tools can already do a lot. For instance, they can rewrite text to simplify it for different audiences, summarize documents, write potential headlines, and brainstorm angles or potential directions for reporting. In data journalism they can be used to classify documents or extract data (with varying degrees of success), or to generate short snippets of text to render descriptions based on structured data. What else could be done with these tools?
There are of course limitations, including bias, nonsense text, and a range of other concerns. For news, the biggest issue is that the tools hallucinate with confidence, making them a ready tool for disinformation production. Any text these tools output still needs to be checked for accuracy and so may be ill-suited to specific tasks. It’s probably better to think of these tools as internal newsroom tools, making suggestions to reporters and editors rather than generating text that will be directly published. Research is blazing ahead to make future versions of the technology better able to output factually accurate text. And news organizations could also invest more in R&D to fine-tune and further adapt the models to be better aligned to journalistic needs. In the meantime, fact-checking should be a growth center for news organizations.
Like any other AI technology, it’s not a button to press to fix what ails news media. But I’m fundamentally optimistic about what might be done with these AI tools when used in responsible ways by journalists.
Nicholas Diakopoulos is an associate professor of communication studies and computer science at Northwestern University.
Cassandra Etienne Local news fellowships will help fight newsroom inequities
Kaitlyn Wells We’ll prioritize media literacy for children
Upasna Gautam Technology that performs at the speed of news
Amethyst J. Davis The slight of the great contraction
Elizabeth Bramson-Boudreau More of the same
Joe Amditis AI throws a lifeline to local publishers
Peter Sterne AI enters the newsroom
Shanté Cosme The answer to “quiet quitting” is radical empathy
Ayala Panievsky It’s time for PR for journalism
Laura E. Davis The year we embrace the robots — and ourselves
Alex Perry New paths to transparency without Twitter
Rodney Gibbs Recalibrating how we work apart
Francesco Zaffarano There is no end of “social media”
Jennifer Choi and Jonathan Jackson Funders finally bet on next-generation news entrepreneurs
Wilson Liévano Diaspora journalism takes the next step
Cari Nazeer and Emily Goligoski News organizations step up their support for caregivers
Leezel Tanglao Community partnerships drive better reporting
Gabe Schneider Well-funded journalism leaders stop making disparate pay
Snigdha Sur Newsrooms get nimble in a recession
Jody Brannon We’ll embrace policy remedies
Felicitas Carrique and Becca Aaronson News product goes from trend to standard
Megan Lucero and Shirish Kulkarni The future of journalism is not you
Nicholas Thompson The year AI actually changes the media business
Josh Schwartz The AI spammers are coming
Jakob Moll Journalism startups will think beyond English
Brian Moritz Rebuilding the news bundle
Simon Galperin Philanthropy stops investing in corporate media
Eric Holthaus As social media fragments, marginalized voices gain more power
Tim Carmody Newsletter writers need a new ethics
Mario García More newsrooms go mobile-first
Anna Nirmala News organizations get new structures
Christoph Mergerson The rot at the core of the news business
Tre'vell Anderson Continued culpability in anti-trans campaigns
Khushbu Shah Global reporting will suffer
Masuma Ahuja Journalism starts working for and with its communities
Gordon Crovitz The year advertisers stop funding misinformation
Lisa Heyamoto The independent news industry gets a roadmap to sustainability
Andrew Losowsky Journalism realizes the replacement for Twitter is not a new Twitter
Julia Beizer News fatigue shows us a clear path forward
Sam Gregory Synthetic media forces us to understand how media gets made
Burt Herman The year AI truly arrives — and with it the reckoning
Victor Pickard The year journalism and capitalism finally divorce
Sarah Stonbely Growth in public funding for news and information at the state and local levels
Johannes Klingebiel The innovation team, R.I.P.
An Xiao Mina Journalism in a time of permacrisis
Ryan Gantz “I’m sorry, but I’m a large language model”
Kerri Hoffman Podcasting goes local
Nikki Usher This is the year of the RSS reader. (Really!)
Mauricio Cabrera It’s no longer about audiences, it’s about communities
Jonas Kaiser Rejecting the “free speech” frame
Kaitlin C. Miller Harassment in journalism won’t get better, but we’ll talk about it more openly
Brian Stelter Finding new ways to reach news avoiders
Cindy Royal Yes, journalists should learn to code, but…
Jennifer Brandel AI couldn’t care less. Journalists will care more.
Ariel Zirulnick Journalism doubles down on user needs
Bill Grueskin Local news will come to rely on AI
Jessica Maddox Journalists keep getting manipulated by internet culture
Sarah Alvarez Dream bigger or lose out
Cory Bergman The AI content flood
Don Day The news about the news is bad. I’m optimistic.
Eric Ulken Generative AI brings wrongness at scale
Stefanie Murray The year U.S. media stops screwing around and becomes pro-democracy
Alex Sujong Laughlin Credit where it’s due
Mar Cabra The inevitable mental health revolution
Jaden Amos TikTok personality journalists continue to rise
Anika Anand Independent news businesses lead the way on healthy work cultures
Esther Kezia Thorpe Subscription pressures force product innovation
Kavya Sukumar Belling the cat: The rise of independent fact-checking at scale
Mael Vallejo More threats to press freedom across the Americas
David Cohn AI made this prediction
Alan Henry A reckoning with why trust in news is so low
Jim Friedlich Local journalism steps up to the challenge of civic coverage
Sue Robinson Engagement journalism will have to confront a tougher reality
Jessica Clark Open discourse retrenches
Eric Thurm Journalists think of themselves as workers
Rachel Glickhouse Humanizing newsrooms will be a badge of honor
Molly de Aguiar and Mandy Van Deven Narrative change trend brings new money to journalism
Nicholas Jackson There will be launches — and we’ll keep doing the work
Sue Schardt Toward a new poetics of journalism
Kathy Lu We need emotionally agile newsroom leaders
Paul Cheung More news organizations will realize they are in the business of impact, not eyeballs
Christina Shih Shared values move from nice-to-haves to essentials
Ryan Kellett Airline-like loyalty programs try to tie down news readers
Juleyka Lantigua Newsrooms recognize women of color as the canaries in the coal mine
Sarah Marshall A web channel strategy won’t be enough
Al Lucca Digital news design gets interesting again
Martina Efeyini Talk to Gen Z. They’re the experts of Gen Z.
Laxmi Parthasarathy Unlocking the silent demand for international journalism
Taylor Lorenz The “creator economy” will be astroturfed
Ben Werdmuller The internet is up for grabs again
Jenna Weiss-Berman The economic downturn benefits the podcasting industry. (No, really!)
Karina Montoya More reporters on the antitrust beat
Matt Rasnic More newsroom workers turn to organized labor
Kirstin McCudden We’ll codify protection of journalism and newsgathering
Sam Guzik AI will start fact-checking. We may not like the results.
Joshua P. Darr Local to live, wire to wither
Dana Lacey Tech will screw publishers over
Alexandra Svokos Working harder to reach audiences where they are
Surya Mattu Data journalists learn from photojournalists
Emma Carew Grovum The year to resist forgetting about diversity
Nicholas Diakopoulos Journalists productively harness generative AI tools
Danielle K. Brown and Kathleen Searles DEI efforts must consider mental health and online abuse
Richard Tofel The press might get better at vetting presidential candidates
Michael W. Wagner The backlash against pro-democracy reporting is coming
S. Mitra Kalita “Everything sucks. Good luck to you.”
Dannagal G. Young Stop rewarding elite performances of identity threat
Janet Haven ChatGPT and the future of trust
Zizi Papacharissi Platforms are over
Moreno Cruz Osório Brazilian journalism turns wounds into action
Michael Schudson Journalism gets more and more difficult
Priyanjana Bengani Partisan local news networks will collaborate
Joanne McNeil Facebook and the media kiss and make up
Eric Nuzum A focus on people instead of power
Jacob L. Nelson Despite it all, people will still want to be journalists
Emily Nonko Incarcerated reporters get more bylines
David Skok Renewed interest in human-powered reporting
Sarabeth Berman Nonprofit local news shows that it can scale
Gina Chua The traditional story structure gets deconstructed
Andrew Donohue We’ll find out whether journalism can, indeed, save democracy
Jarrad Henderson Video editing will help people understand the media they consume
Pia Frey Publishers start polling their users at scale
Jesse Holcomb Buffeted, whipped, bullied, pulled
Ståle Grut Your newsroom experiences a Midjourney-gate, too
Hillary Frey Death to the labor-intensive memo for prospective hires
Errin Haines Journalists on the campaign trail mend trust with the public
Larry Ryckman We’ll work together with our competitors
Anita Varma Journalism prioritizes the basic need for survival
Parker Molloy We’ll reach new heights of moral panic
Basile Simon Towards supporting criminal accountability
Peter Bale Rising costs force more digital innovation
Doris Truong Workers demand to be paid what the job is worth
Walter Frick Journalists wake up to the power of prediction markets
Delano Massey The industry shakes its imposter syndrome
Daniel Trielli Trust in news will continue to fall. Just look at Brazil.
Sue Cross Thinking and acting collectively to save the news
Jim VandeHei There is no “peak newsletter”
Julia Angwin Democracies will get serious about saving journalism
Tamar Charney Flux is the new stability
Bill Adair The year of the fact-check (no, really!)
Joni Deutsch Podcast collaboration — not competition — breeds excellence
Dominic-Madori Davis Everyone finally realizes the need for diverse voices in tech reporting
Elite Truong In platform collapse, an opportunity for community
Mary Walter-Brown and Tristan Loper Mission-driven metrics become our North Star
J. Siguru Wahutu American journalism reckons with its colonialist tendencies
Valérie Bélair-Gagnon Well-being will become a core tenet of journalism
Anthony Nadler Confronting media gerrymandering
Susan Chira Equipping local journalism
Raney Aronson-Rath Journalists will band together to fight intimidation
Alexandra Borchardt The year of the climate journalism strategy
Amy Schmitz Weiss Journalism education faces a crossroads
A.J. Bauer Covering the right wrong
Ryan Nave Citizen journalism, but make it equitable
Mariana Moura Santos A woman who speaks is a woman who changes the world
Sumi Aggarwal Smart newsrooms will prioritize board development
Janelle Salanga Journalists work from a place of harm reduction