AI poses 'biggest risk' to news organisations as trust in global media declines, study finds

Artificial Intelligence (AI) A report released on Monday by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism said it was creating new challenges for an already struggling news industry.

Mass layoffs, closures and other cuts due to rising costs and falling advertising revenues have seen public trust in the media fall to about 40%, with AI raising doubts, according to the survey.

The study added that AI could drive traffic away from news sites and apps, leading to “further uncertainty” about what the information environment will look like in a few years' time.

Among almost 10,000 people surveyed across 47 countries, there was “widespread skepticism” about how AI is used for hard news such as politics and war.

The survey found that 52% of US respondents and 63% of UK respondents said they would be uncomfortable with news produced primarily by AI.

However, the survey noted that respondents were more comfortable with AI being used to support, rather than replace, journalists with behind-the-scenes tasks such as transcription and translation.

Newsrooms are competing with AI companies like: Google and Open AIHas the ability to summarize information from news websites.

However, media companies are also looking to use AI in-house because it can reduce costs and personalize content for users, the study said.

Examples of AI use include a Nordic publisher using AI to generate bullet points at the beginning of articles, and a German publisher using AI robots to write more than 5% of published articles.

In some parts of the world, there are also AI radio news readers and TV presenters.

News Influencer

A 13% increase in users turning to TikTok to watch news is creating new challenges for news organizations.

Research shows that news influencers play a bigger role than mainstream media companies.

In a survey of more than 5,600 TikTok users who said they use the app for news, 57% said they primarily follow individual personalities, while 34% said they primarily follow journalists or news brands.

In France, 27-year-old Hugo Travers, known online as Hugo Décrypte, is mentioned more in political commentary videos than traditional news outlets like Le Monde and BFMTV, according to the study. He has 2.6 million subscribers on YouTube and 5.8 million on TikTok.

“Overall, journalists' use of AI is still in its early stages, but this is also the time that carries the greatest risks for news organizations,” the study said, adding that “publishers need to be extremely careful about where and how they deploy AI.”

“Wide-reaching concerns about the proliferation of synthetic content on online platforms mean that trusted brands that use the technology responsibly may be rewarded, but that trust can easily be lost if they get it wrong.”