AI spreads in journalism. Remain calm, everyone.

Social media had a good time mocking this AI prep football story published by Gannett’s Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch on Aug. 18. It contains no names or stats, repeats the score in the first two paragraphs, repeats “Ohio football” in the first two paragraphs, and includes bizarre phrases such as “thin win” and “close encounter of the athletic kind.” The question is, is a mess like that better than no report at all? UPDATE AUG. 28: Axios reported that after this story went viral on social media, the dispatch “paused” use of its ai program to write prep sports stories.

The issue of how artificial intelligence programs will affect journalism is an interesting and complicated one. Some say they could have benefits. Others say they might be harmful. It depends on how they are used.

Did you think this was yet another article about AI for which the writer cleverly asked an AI program to write the lead? Fooled ya! This was actually my trying to write like an AI program.

Either way, pretty lame, eh?

The use of artificial intelligence in journalism is spreading rapidly, and debates over what newsrooms should and shouldn’t use it for are spreading even more rapidly. Rest assured the private equity and hedge fund owners of news chains are trying to figure out how they can use it to save on labor costs, which has led to some panic among the industry rank and file about job security and product quality.

AI software currently has a variety of uses in the field. Just a few examples: transcribing interviews; identifying trending topics online; delivering individually personalized news; flexible website paywalls; and internet data scraping. Let’s focus on its more controversial ability to create content.

The Associated Press uses AI to write articles from reports of corporate earnings. The Washington Post uses it to write articles from high school football statistics. These are examples of smart applications, producing formulaic stories in quantity and freeing journalists for more ambitious work.*

“Large language models” such as ChatGPT and Bard can also write whole stories from inputted data. This is not as smart. Even though the capabilities of AI are improving rapidly, results are too often factually wrong, dully written and generic rather than localized. Journalism garbage, in other words.

Nieman Lab recently surveyed news organizations around the world that have guidelines on AI and found that most do not allow creation of stories and photos. (Accepted uses included research, headline suggestions, social media posts and creation of illustrations.) The Knight Foundation examined 130 AI-related newsroom projects and determined that only 15% of them involved automated story generation.

The future might look different. The New York Times reported in July that Google demonstrated a story-writing program to representatives of The Times, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal, who saw it as potential assistance to their journalists.

AI offers tremendous potential gains in the production of standardized news stories. But writing journalism that readers will pay for demands more than that: critical thinking, context, nuance, creativity, style. And no good story can be written without the good reporting and interviewing that must come first. All that comes from pros, not programs.

Of course, news owners and managers have to recognize this, which explains the alarm among news unions and other news staff. Bosses can’t afford to underestimate the value of high-quality work and what it takes to achieve it.

New tech is always scary. It can be misused. But it can also be a gift.

*Sometimes AI can’t even do formula stories without embarrassment. See the photo with this post and the update in the caption Aug. 28.

Click here for my February take on how AI fits, and doesn’t fit, in a college classroom.

We're not in Kansas anymore

police confiscate equipment from the newsroom of the marion county record in marion, kansas, on aug. 11.

UPDATE (Aug. 16, 4:30 p.m.): The Marion County prosecutor said this afternoon that the warrant application had insufficient evidence to justify the search and the Kansas Bureau of Investigation said seized items would be returned to the newspaper. UPDATE (Oct. 3): Marion’s police chief was suspended, then he resigned.

The many powerful people who don’t like the news media have all sorts of ways to make life harder for them. Publicly attack credibility. Pass laws restricting information. Take away public notices. File a lawsuit. And the occasional physical assault.

There’s also the option to steal their equipment and kill their mothers.

The journalism community across the country is rightly up in arms about Friday’s raid on the newsroom of the family-owned Marion County Record in Marion, Kansas (population 1,900). Acting with a search warrant approved by a judge, local law enforcement seized computers, cellphones and other reporting materials. One reporter had her cellphone taken from her hand.

Authorities also raided the home of the editor and his 98-year-old mother, the newspaper’s co-owner. “These are Hitler tactics,” she said. Her son said the raid “stressed her beyond her limits” and left her unable to eat or sleep. The next day, she collapsed and died.

According to the warrant, the searches and seizures stemmed from an investigation into whether the newspaper committed a crime – identity theft and illegal use of a computer – to obtain (but not publish) records showing an old criminal conviction of a local citizen. The editor denies this, saying a confidential source provided the records unsolicited.

Journalists can’t commit crimes to gather news. But it’s well established that they can’t be punished if they innocently receive information that was illegally obtained by someone else.

Maybe this is a sincere investigation by Marion police. Or more likely, as the editor believes, this is harassment motivated by the newspaper’s current investigation into the reasons the police chief left his previous job.

Don’t ever be surprised when there’s a political angle to these things.

Even more alarmingly, the editor says the confiscated equipment holds the names of confidential sources the Record talked to in its reporting about the chief.

When the government decides to get heavy handed with news organizations, it’s often by using subpoenas to try to obtain reporters’ cellphone and email records from a third party as part of a leak investigation (see here, here and here for examples). That’s not great, but at least news organizations can challenge subpoenas or negotiate what information might be turned over to the government.

That ain’t what happened in Marion. The raids were a remarkable abuse of power and almost certainly illegal under federal law. Thirty five news outlets and press freedom organizations sent Marion’s police chief a letter correctly noting that “newsroom searches and seizures are among the most intrusive actions law enforcement can take with respect to the free press, and the most potentially suppressive of free speech by the press and the public.”

Obviously, searches and seizures are physical interferences with journalists’ ability to do their jobs. Powerful people trying to avoid accountability also like the companion effect of intimidating journalists’ potential future sources.

Last week’s episode took place in Kansas USA, but actions like those come from the script of authoritarian governments.