Business Insider allows journalists to use AI for their first draft without having to disclose their use to their readers. This is a major change in the news. The existence of AI in the newsroom is inevitable, but disclosure alone does not protect reliability.
Media organizations need to strengthen trust with their readers. That means telling them how they use these technologies and saving human touches. If news outlets cannot maintain this trust through the AI transition, they will alienate the very audience who rely on their business.
Newsroom Crunch
All industries are rushing to adopt AI. And in the case of media outlets, the use of AI makes more and more sense. Amidst economic pressure, newsrooms across the country are shrinking staff and tightening budgets. This year, several newsrooms, including the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, CNN and NBC, fired staff for financial reasons. Business Insider was not immune. The company received three layoffs and reduced its staff by 21% as part of its transition to AI integration.
Newsrooms need to evolve to meet industry needs and don't help you leverage tools like AI to fill gaps. Anyone who has played on LLM has seen how they can summarise long documents, analyze data, and streamline their ideas.
However, integrating AI does not come at the expense of readers. When AI writes news, it's not a tool. It's an alternative and the audience can feel the difference.
A study from the University of Kansas found that people view news releases written by humans as more reliable than AI-generated releases. Furthermore, even if many adults use AI themselves, half of US adults believe that AI will have a long-term negative impact on the news. Human storytelling often creates authentic, impactful stories, increasing the number of readers you already trust.
Responsible AI use for communicators
So how do communications experts take advantage of AI without alienating readers?
Business Insider disclosure offers one potential approach. Clear news revealing the scope of AI use hopes to build greater trust with audiences and not be detected than those that have started quietly using them behind the scenes.
However, disclosure alone is not sufficient. Communicators need to be thoughtful about how they use AI. The best approach is to use AI as an assistant, but still relies on human judgment to guide the task. AI is a powerful tool to speed up your research, media monitoring and drafting processes. It can also segment your audience and predict questions and concerns. These insights can help enhance messaging and help communication experts create resonant responses. Still, speed and insights have been around so far. LLMS can generate misinformation or configured information, and requires the human eye to edit and fact-check AI output.
The power of the audience
Communications experts should also prioritize listening to the audience. Listening is the key to understanding what always resonates, and it remains true in AI. One way to do this is to see how viewers respond to news outlets that disclose or do not disclose their use of AI. Shifts in subscription levels, public trusts, and website traffic can all indicate whether readers are separated or stuck with those news sources. You can use that information to adapt the pitch according to what your audience actually wants.
AI is a very useful time-saving resource. It frees up more time for humans to develop relationships and exercise their creativity. Above all, it creates a space for people to do just what they can: connect with an empathetic and credible audience.
Business Insider will affect other news outlets. Some publications rely on trust through AI disclosure, while others pivot completely. But one principle is fundamental. Keep people at the center. Whether that means keeping humans at the heart of journalism or prioritizing preferences, people must ask that instead of exchanging them, they use AI to enhance human creativity and intelligence.
Nicole Tidei is Vice President of Pinkston, a full-service branding, marketing and communications company based in Washington, D.C.
