A new academic study finds that news consumers prefer short-form videos produced or edited by journalists over those generated by artificial intelligence alone.
The study showed 100 people clips of 14 news events about Cristiano Ronaldo, Donald Trump, Justin Bieber and others. For each news article, one video was highly automated, one was partially automated with input from a human editor, and the third was fully human-generated.
A study comparing viewers’ opinions on each clip concluded: “Human-made videos are better than automated ones.”
However, the difference between partially automated videos and human-created clips was not noticeable, and “the conservative use of automation with post-automation human editing may well be acceptable.” suggests that
Researchers found that human videos “tell respondents something they didn’t know,” It was found that there was a tendency to be evaluated more favorably in terms of “flow” and “modesty”. .
These were “on average rated as being more emotional and lighter in tone” and judged to have less “sensationalism”. Respondents also suggested that human-made videos make better use of sound, music, and images.
[Read more: Survey finds half of newsrooms already ‘actively working’ with generative AI]
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Dr. Neil Thurman, Ludwig-Maximilians University of Munich, who has worked with Dr. Sally Stars at City, University of London, and Dr. Michael Koriska, Georgetown University, said of the highly automated video: I’m here. A repetition of the images they used. They weren’t able to match the images and captions etc. very well. He suggested that perceptions of “sensationalism” in AI videos may be related to the music that accompanies the clip.
One of the automated videos chronicled the career of Portuguese footballer Cristiano Ronaldo in 60 seconds and was set to rock music. Obvious errors included a still image of another footballer, Fernando Torres, and a still image of England fans in a pub.
The researchers found that human-produced videos were more likely to have ‘story structure’, ‘number of relevant facts presented’, ‘bias/fairness’, ‘subjectivity/objectivity’, ‘relevance’, and ‘informativeness’. ”, “Clarity” and “Accuracy”.
“We need to keep humans up to date.”
The study used human-generated videos provided by PA Media and compared them to automated and semi-automated videos created by Wibbitz, whose customers include Reuters, Condé Nast, USA Today, TMZ, and NBC.
A highly automated video for the study was created using scripts of prepared texts for each news event. Automation tools took media such as video clips and still images, added background music, and used various pre-built “themes” that set the tempo and look of the video. Semi-automated videos contain editorial editing and may change images, text and style.
[Read more: AI and journalism – Six things news publishers need to know]
“Our research shows that, on average, news consumers prefer short-form, automated news videos as much as manually produced ones, as long as human oversight is included in the automated process. ‘, said Thurman.
“One of the key takeaways from this research is that the output of video automation may be best suited for hybrid formats, or human-machine collaboration,” Koliska said. Hybridization involves more human supervision, allowing automated video production to maintain quality standards while leveraging the strengths of computers such as speed and scale.”
Thurman told the Press Gazette that he believes news publishers recognize that “people need to be always involved” when introducing automation.
“Maybe a few years ago they thought more that AI could do more,” he says. “I think now they have come to understand that they need human oversight, and it would be equally beneficial to work on technology that empowers journalists who are not trained in traditional video editing tools.” .” Make it professional quality. ”
Read the full research here.
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