Divergent paths for journalism’s future with AI

When it comes to AI, journalism as a profession seems to be caught between the extremes of hope and disillusionment. Attitudes on the role and impact of AI on journalism tend to veer from fears about robots replacing journalists to hopes that machines could boost quality journalism.

The media industry is at a critical juncture in its relationship with artificial intelligence, especially generative AI. The coming year is likely to see a significant divergence in how news organizations approach AI with two distinct choices between substituting or complementing journalists. The theories of AI as a substituting force or complementary force in the labor market provide a way to chart the choices ahead.

The substituting force refers to the phenomenon where technological advancements or new work practices replace or reduce the need for certain types of labor. Consider the now obsolete job of the elevator operator.

The substituting path envisions AI as a replacement for human journalists. This scenario is already unfolding in some areas of journalism, with news agencies using AI to generate stories once performed by entry-level journalists.

In the U.K., the Press Association already integrates non-generative AI into its wire service with products like RADAR. It enabled a team of five journalists to file more than 400,000 local news stories in the three years since its 2018 launch.

More recently, there have been AI-generated presenters, with the U.K.’s third-largest regional media group National World debuting its AI weather presenter in 2023.

With AI rapidly developing, this trend could potentially extend to more complex journalistic tasks, such as creating AI-generated podcasts like Discover Daily by Perplexity.

The complementary force, on the other hand, occurs when the same changes in technology or work increase the demand for certain types of labor by complementing existing skills. For example, the rise of data and computational journalists in the newsroom over the past decade.

In the scenario, AI assists journalists by handling time-consuming tasks like data analysis, fact-checking, and transcription. For example, the Associated Press has developed a tool to search and filter posts on local government websites from across the US, looking for news tips. In the U.K., the BBC is testing AI-generated story graphics to reversion existing BBC news for a younger audience on social media.

The choice between these paths is not binary, and the future lies somewhere in between. It is reminiscent of the early 2000s and 2010s when the internet and social media were either going to save journalism and foster a more democratic media, or create a dystopian era where clickbait flourished and viral falsehoods spread. The reality between these extremes has ebbed and flowed over the past two decades.

There is no doubt that the direction taken with AI will significantly shape the future of journalism. The substitution path holds the lure of efficiencies, reduced costs, and savings at scale. The complementary path, while preserving more human jobs, would require a focus on public interest rather than profit-driven journalism. As the news industry faces continued political, economic, and societal pressures, 2025 looks set to be a year of reckoning for AI and journalism.