How Artificial Intelligence is Changing the Future of Journalism

6 years ago | Posted in: Robotics, Technology | 1289 Views

The news industry in the United Kingdom as well as across the globe has seen a sharp decline as more and more people are shifting their focus to the internet and social media when it comes to getting their news. With a large part of the population going online rather than reading newspapers, it is evident that companies and advertisers are shifting their advertising and marketing expenses as well towards online and social media marketing. It has caused a lot of problems as the local journalists are losing their job and there is no one to highlight the local news or hold local authorities accountable as stringently as before.

Robot Journalism

However, to fill in the gap, a new form of journalism is blossoming with the help of artificial intelligence that would replace the local news reporter. One of the leading news agencies in the United Kingdom, Press Association, claims that the artificial intelligence can help fill the void of regional newspaper offices and news reporters. Press Association has partnered with Urbs Media, an automation company, and is funded by Google’s grant of 706,000 Euros to create 30,000 local news reports monthly.

The key to the success of this concept is the natural language generation, which relies on the automation and the artificial intelligence. Its success relies on the fact that results can be achieved if humans and computers use the same language to communicate. The fact that machines can learn human language faster than we can understand computer language works well in this regards. The AI journalism would basically create news stories from the data it has been fed. The project is called RADAR, which stands for Reporters and Data and Robots. The project relies on data sets open for use from the public services, government, and local news agencies and authorities.

Facts about the Use of Artificial Intelligence in Journalism

Undoubtedly, the artificial intelligence technology has come a long way in the field of journalism, and the road ahead looks bright as well. However, there would always be some limitations to it that need to be fulfilled by the human intelligence. One of the facts about AI in journalism is that the system cannot write narratives on its own, and needs the assistance of the journalists to write stories with the essence of local flavor. It is the journalists that would help in giving a narrative to the content that would be used by the AI system to create stories. Even if the AI system processes the information and creates stories, journalists have to go through the accounts for errors and to ensure interpretation of the news stories is as required. One thing to keep in mind about the AI systems is that it would help in increasing the output or the production of the news stories, but wouldn’t necessarily enhance the quality of the news stories.

Applications of Artificial Intelligence in Journalism

Artificial Intelligence can process a lot of data sets, and in the field of journalism, AI systems help in analyzing if there is any newsworthy news trending and if the news is truthful. There is an AI-based News Tracer used by the world’s leading news agency, Reuters. The news agency uses AI to process the workflows using advanced GPU database, but it primarily uses the skills of the journalists to process the news to bring to the readers the best content possible.

Artificial intelligence is going to change the way news is created in the years to come as it would not only aid journalists with their work to generate meaningful content, but also help in increasing the quantity of the output. The outreach of the news and the journalism would also improve drastically with the help of artificial intelligence, and people would be able to stay updated about the recent news, local and international both, in almost real-time. The field of journalism would be significantly helped by the use of artificial intelligence based processing systems.

 

by: Mark Palmer

Tags: , ,

Share it.

Leave a Reply

Related Posts