Fake news, misinformation, and disinformation- these concerns are now only the tip of the iceberg; the bigger challenge that Journalists needs to both prepare for and be skeptical of- is the penetration of Artificial Intelligence and robots gradual substituting TV anchors, Radio Jockeys and feature writers. According to the Diversity in Journalism report released in 2017 by the National Council for the Training of Journalists, reporters are less ethnically diverse than the workforce as a whole with 94% of those being 'white'. What does that mean for the future of Asians in journalism and does the penetration of AI mean that journalism schools are now going to shut down?
“With news agencies speed is important which is why they need to resort to algorithms but accuracy is equally important,” said a freelance journalist from Europe who wished to stay anonymous.
Robots curate financial company reports
Reuters, Bloomberg and Financial Times are competitive news organisations always racing against each other in releasing individual company results, economic numbers and commodity data that needs to be disseminated to their hedge fund clientele in micro-seconds.
“These company reports are often the same each quarter in terms of the format. The only difference is that you need to be sharp enough to pick out the important numbers. But apart from that there is hardly any creativity required. So, the collation of these reports can often be done by such algorithms and the fastest organisation to do so often wins the jackpot,” she explained.
Bloomberg news is one of the first adaptors of this automated content. Cyborg, churned out thousands of articles for the news organisation last year by taking these financial reports and turning them into news stories like a business reporter. Other organisations include Washington Post using Heliograf, Forbes which uses Content Management System called 'Bertie'.
The line between Artificial Intelligence and Artificial Journalism
While mainstream print and digital media in the west have been picking up the tech fad, in the east, China’s state news agency Xinhua introduced AI anchor named Qiu Hao. These anchors were developed through machine learning where they had simulated the voice, facial movements, and gestures of real-life broadcasters. Does this mean that news will be delivered through Machine Learning from now on and does it allude to a loss in field reporting?
“Yes and no. I think there’s no replacement to being on the field. But stories from individuals and photographs / videos from regular people go a long way in recording an incident and telling the story accurately.
There’s space for both. What’s sad though is that for many news companies - field reporters are becoming less important in comparison to the desk bound social media reporters. Companies must continue to invest in field reporting and see value in stories told from the field,” said Rahul Joglekar, a freelance journalist and filmmaker with many years of experience at the BBC in London.
Sarah O'Connor is a journalist who had challenged “Emma” her technical counterpart at Financial Times while filing a story about the UK's employment data. To her surprise not only had the robot been three times faster in drafting the story but had also been interpretive in providing context to the story and included relevant angles such as Brexit to the piece. However, the article drafted by the robot appeared so dull, and un-engaging that it would have failed to draw reader's attention.
“In my opinion, it always boils down to quality reporting, which I think cannot possibly be done by AI,” said Deborah Bonetti, Director, The Foreign Press Association, London.
Elon Musk's not for profit charity OpenAI has launched a new AI model that can write news stories almost from complete scratch. The AI system is fed text, anything from a few words, and asked to write the next few sentences based on its predictions of what should come next. It is almost an extended version of the 'autocorrect' feature which saves many from the humiliation of unknown spellings. But what about liaising with different organisations such as government bodies, or PR agencies?
PR agencies and the human touch
“Artificial Intelligence is being used in a meaningful way in the PR industry by doing the everyday mundane tasks from preparing name badges for press events to curating data,” said Sangeeta Waldron, owner and founder of Serendipity PR & Media.
“Public relations is all about story-telling and building relationships but Artificial Intelligence is not at the moment able to replicate emotional intelligence and bring in the human skills of creativity.
“We can't ignore it but we need to think about how we're going to regulate it, in terms of putting it to good use and ensuring that there are ethics behind it,” she said.
The increasing penetration of technology, machine learning and social media are all wake-up calls to all journalists, who appear to compete with “RoboReporters”. These new-age tech-savvy journalists can in a long run prove to be more cost-effective, faster and more efficient and may start appearing on your television screens as well.
“It is possible but will it work? I personally wouldn’t trust a robot to go out and tell a proper story. Maybe technology will one day be invented that can do that - but until then hopefully, people will rely on good broadcasters and field reporters!” Joglekar concluded.
