Your say / Bristol24/7
Is AI the future of local news?
In the last 12 months, AI has exploded. ChatGPT, an AI language bot, currently has over 180 million users: more than twice the population of the UK.
AI is being hailed as the future of many things, destined to make our lives and work easier.
is needed now More than ever
But it comes with a cost, and often that cost is the truth.
So should it be used in journalism?
According to data from YouGov, only six per cent of Brits think that the benefits of using AI in journalism will outweigh the negatives.
They are probably right. AI chatbots are prone to ‘hallucinations’, the phenomenon of making up data but presenting it as fact in response to the user’s prompts. They do so because they are trained on vast quantities of data and are taught to generate links between words.
Thus, when they answer a question, each subsequent word generated is based on what is most statistically likely to come next, as opposed to what is true. Then there is the risk that the data they are trained on could also contain bias.
Some hallucinations are easy to spot – no, Brunel is not living in a penthouse underneath the suspension bridge and no, he doesn’t waterski to work every morning.
Others, less so. It is the ones that slip through the net that we need to worry about.
When you’re asking ChatGPT to rewrite a press release, which is what the news outlets that are using it tend to be focussing on, it’s not so much of a problem as the information is already there.
Business Editor Milan Perera is one member of our small but committed team – photo: Meg Houghton-Gilmour
Reach, the corporation that is responsible for many local titles such as Bristol Live, has rolled out an AI tool that allows its journalists to quickly rewrite content from other titles around the country and make it vaguely relevant to their local area.
This is all well and good, except for the fact that when I look at a local newspaper in Bristol I don’t want to read about a kitten that was found in a bin in Newcastle.
More concerning is if an AI language bot was asked to write a report on life in Knowle West, for example. It would crawl the data that it has on the area, the majority of which would be news headlines.
The resulting article would likely lean heavily into the negative stories that have been reported on in mainstream media with a sprinkling of ‘hallucinations’ throughout, thus perpetuating the media bias and arguably in the long term creating a self-fulfilling prophecy loop. Not good.
An AI can’t be proud of the new magazine when it comes back hot off the press – photo: Meg Houghton-Gilmour
Over 50 per cent of the people surveyed by YouGov weren’t sure if they had ever read an article written by an AI. Think about it. How would you know? This very article could have been written by ChatGPT. It hasn’t, but there are no news sites that are labelling content as AI-generated, so how would you know?
The short answer is: You won’t. But you do have a say in the matter. You can vote for the kind of media you want, simply by reading it.
Bristol24/7 is run by a team of thirteen based out of the Tobacco Factory in Bedminster. Unsurprisingly we have not developed our own AI bot to rehash press releases, preferring instead to invest in our journalists, who write about local people and stories.
While humans are prone to error too, our journalists do not hallucinate facts and we do everything in our power to shine a light on the positive news coming out of Bristol’s most deprived wards through our community reporters scheme. Our editorial team spend their days out and about in Bristol, talking to people, taking pictures, documenting protests, attending council meetings and reporting on their findings. AI simply cannot do that.
An AI cannot organise local hustings in the name of democracy – photo: Rob Browne
The media holds far more weight than it should in our society. It has considerable influence on how we interact with our community, what businesses we support, how we feel about our politics and even how we feel about ourselves. Do we want that influence to be generated by AI in the guise of news reporting?
For me, it’s an obvious choice. I’d much rather have people that I know and trust writing about my home town, even when I don’t agree with them.
To support human-made news and ensure that we can continue employing real people for the foreseeable future, please consider becoming a member of Bristol24/7. Our small publication is supported by a community of over 1,100 individuals who back our work, and to say thanks we send them perks every month such as free pints and discounted meals.
Join our community and place a vote for the kind of future media you want to see. Visit Bristol247.com/join to become a member for just £5 a month.
Main photo: Bristol24/7
Read next:
Our top newsletters emailed directly to you
