AI is everywhere. Editors should be, too.
Every day I read more about generative artificial intelligence, and pretty much every day I see ads trying to sell me some AI-powered app or service that claims it will boost my productivity, make my workflow more efficient or help my students learn better.
This technology, like others before it, is changing how we work and teach and learn. But wherever AI goes, editing should go with it.
As AI use becomes increasingly common in media professions, humans need to remain in the process to ensure AI output is useful, appropriate — and correct. Accuracy is crucial to maintaining credibility, and the sharp eyes and fact-checking skills of editors are crucial to accuracy.
AI so commonly generates wrong or fake information that the phenomenon has a name: hallucination. Generated outputs confidently assert “facts” that are fiction, sources that don’t exist and events that never happened. In fact, the hallucination rate has gotten worse in the latest iteration of OpenAI, meaning more, not fewer, humans need to be involved in the publication process.
Related Knowledge Center: Artificial intelligence
On top of a failing business model, newsrooms must navigate the powerful — and not fully reliable — new capabilities of artificial intelligence and the deployment of large language models.
State of the business model | Copyright and intellectual property
Related Knowledge Center: Inside the newsroom
As newsrooms struggle with rickety business models and precarious finances — as well as new technologies — they are deploying an array of editorial responses.
The Times and its critics | Washington Post mortem