Published in cooperation between Outreach Marketing and Metro Silicon Valley

Few occupations generate the divisive opinions journalists have to stomach from the general public. You only have to take a quick scan of social media to see that there’s no love lost for the occupation as a whole, despite the irony of some people who hang on journalists’ every word, so long as they’re echoing their beliefs.

Addressing the AI question is difficult in any industry; there are only a small number of jobs that are safe from this technology for now, and we’re already beginning to see some of the early influence in journalism and a host of others. Is it realistic to ask whether all our news could one day be AI-generated, with AI journalists performing the role of traditional journalism?

Weighing Up The Use Of AI In Other Industries

Journalism is one of many industries in which AI technology is starting to play a part. No, this doesn’t mean that everything in the office is AI-generated. Still, technology is increasingly used, ranging from tools like advanced spellcheck, which helps journalists write their pieces, to article structure ideas and AI-generated imagery to run alongside the article.

Other sectors are starting to implement greater use of AI tech, ranging significantly from customer service to the casino gaming world. Although the initial integration of AI in casino gaming stemmed from picking up on player patterns, some casinos have floated the idea of having AI in a more hands-on role, replacing live dealers. 

That’s not a cause to be alarmed if you’re a dealer in a casino. A live dealer in any casino game can interact with players, gauge how they’re gelling with each other, and, if necessary, spot those who might be exhibiting an issue with their gambling. Up to now, AI does not have this capability, but in a decade or two, there could be more AI tech in casino gaming.

Customer service roles are also in the firing line, with many large corporations now shifting toward AI bots and live chat customer service options rather than employing human staff when they can invest in AI to do it for a fraction of the cost.

Crossing The Bridge Between AI & Journalism

Over the last twenty years, journalism has faced a perfect storm of negative factors contributing to the slow demise of the traditional industry. While it was evident that the internet was going to become the number one news source and that it would transform the traditional advertising models that made legacy journalism such a viable sector, few predicted that technology would result in a 24/7 news cycle, which is increasingly becoming poorly sourced and poorly written. It’s all about engagement and getting likes and clicks.

We’re not saying this is the case for all journalism, but an industry that had stood solid for over a century had to make a serious change to its operations. Journalists have had to adapt to AI and to the emergence of DIY news on social media rather than work against it in the same manner they would’ve when the internet first emerged in the early 2000s. 

In a bizarre story from earlier this year, a journalist for a local US media outlet admitted using AI to write all his stories, including generating fake quotes. Who knows why and how he thought he could get away with it. However, it shows the potential trajectory for journalism, not so much that journalists will revert to this lazy method—but that AI will soon get to such a level of capability that people won’t be able to tell if it’s AI or human-written. 

If it does, expect multi-billion dollar legacy media outlets to weigh up the options of employing 100 staff members or a skeleton staff and one AI expert to oversee the automated work. 

Exploring The Possibilities

There’s an argument that AI could replace journalism over the next 20 or 30 years, and as we alluded to in our introduction, there’s a possibility that it could come for many other sectors, too. Anything that involves writing will be in the firing line. 

Many believe that films could soon be AI-written or generated, even after the immense success of Barbenheimer in the summer of 2023. If movie companies can find a way to cut costs without worrying about their bottom line, you better believe they will explore that possibility, just as media companies will. 

Summary

We’d say the chances of journalists being replaced by AI are reasonably slim for now. The more pressing issue has been the rise of organic, grassroots media, which has emerged across social media and jeopardized the stranglehold that many big media companies used to have on the industry. 

There’s also a human element—AI is so disruptive that even if the technology is good enough to replace journalists, the economic cost of so many people being put out of work could outweigh the benefits anyway. It’s a major balancing act, and it is a question often pondered when weighing up the positives and negatives of AI. 

Although some news outlets will be trimmed down, and smaller start-ups might experiment with using AI to generate news and post stories, it’s going to be impossible to replace all journalists, especially investigative journalists who put themselves in the firing line and often take months to investigate stories that require human nuance.