Commentary: AI Made This Podcast — But We Made Sure it Got it Right
By Gordon Crovitz, NewsGuard Co-CEO
When Reality Check reports about artificial intelligence, it’s almost always to explain how bad actors use fake images, audio, or video to fool people into believing falsehoods, from Russian disinformation to healthcare hoaxes and conspiracy theories.
As a change of pace, we are presenting a use of AI to inform people about misinformation instead of to create misinformation: We are sharing an AI-produced podcast version of the most recent week of top Reality Check stories. This podcast, produced using Google’s NotebookLM, shows how accurate and engaging an AI-created podcast can be — so long as it is carefully reviewed by humans, in our case by NewsGuard analysts.
We were surprised by how well the AI “hosts” are able to tell the stories we cover in Reality Check. We thought our Reality Check readers might be as interested as we were in hearing what an AI tool can do to convert a written report into a podcast format. Again, however entertaining or informative the podcast sounds, we believe that has to be accompanied by close human oversight — and with clear disclosure that AI is being used.
We think we have done a good job on both counts, but we would like to know if you agree. So, please let us know what you think about this use of AI, including whether you would like to have a regular podcast version of Reality Check.
Gordon Crovitz is the Co-CEO and Co-Editor-In-Chief of NewsGuard. Previously, he was publisher of The Wall Street Journal.
We launched Reality Check after seeing how much interest there is in our work beyond the business and tech communities that we serve. Subscribe to this newsletter to support our apolitical mission to counter misinformation for readers, brands, and democracies. Have feedback? Send us an email: realitycheck@newsguardtech.com.
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