Report by Nicholas Diakopoulos et al: “The introduction of ChatGPT by OpenAI in late 2022 captured the imagination of the public—and the news industry—with the potential of generative AI to upend how people create and consume media. Generative AI is a type of artificial intelligence technology that can create new content, such as text, images, audio, video, or other media, based on the data it has been trained on and according to written prompts provided by users. ChatGPT is the chat-based user interface that made the power and potential of generative AI salient to a wide audience, reaching 100 million users within two months of its launch.
Although similar technology had been around, by late 2022 it was suddenly working, spurring its integration into various products and presenting not only a host of opportunities for productivity and new experiences but also some serious concerns about accuracy, provenance and attribution of source information, and the increased potential for creating misinformation.
This report serves as a snapshot of how the news industry has grappled with the initial promises and challenges of generative AI towards the end of 2023. The sample of participants reflects how some of the more savvy and experienced members of the profession are reacting to the technology.
Based on participants’ responses, they found that generative AI is already changing work structure and organization, even as it triggers ethical concerns around use. Here are some key takeaways:
- Applications in News Production. The most predominant current use cases for generative AI include various forms of textual content production, information gathering and sensemaking, multimedia content production, and business uses.
- Changing Work Structure and Organization. There are a host of new roles emerging to grapple with the changes introduced by generative AI including for leadership, editorial, product, legal, and engineering positions.
- Work Redesign. There is an unmet opportunity to design new interfaces to support journalistic work with generative AI, in particular to enable the human oversight needed for the efficient and confident checking and verification of outputs..(More)”