Max Ayoub, a senior at UIC Communications, is working on all parts of his journalism training while working remotely as a freelance night reporter for a television station. daily herald of Arlington Heights.
He asks questions, interviews sources, follows leads, and writes articles on deadline every night. Writing long articles is a skill he learned in senior lecturer Mike Riley’s AI in Journalism course, where students used Perplexity to research topics, write articles, and discuss the use of AI in journalism and the legal and ethical issues surrounding its use.
“I gained a lot from learning about AI tools. The biggest value for me was the opportunity to write more,” says Ayoub. “Since last semester, the AI tool I’ve been using is Perplexity. I’ve found it to be very helpful, not only for research but also great for organizing sources.”
AI has been integrated into writing and online research for several years now. These include Google Search, Shopping Recommendations, Grammarly, and social media feeds. But the large-scale language models introduced in late 2022 are reshaping the conventions of writing, and journalism is no exception. As future journalists study the field at university, news organizations around the world are grappling with how to leverage AI without sacrificing trust.
In addition to teaching courses at UIC, Riley travels around the country teaching professional journalists how to use AI. He emphasizes using AI as a “sidekick” rather than a replacement for writing.
“Think of AI as a sidekick, like Elwood Bruce was to Joliet Jake in ‘The Blues Brothers.’ Artificial intelligence does certain things to help you,” Reilly said. “Maybe it’s writing a headline. Maybe it’s creating a summary from your interview notes. You don’t have to use the content returned, but you can take it and edit it.
“My number one rule is don’t use it to write a story for you.”
First Guardrails: Ethics in the Age of AI
The Communications Department committee spent more than a year establishing standards for the use and teaching of AI in the classroom.
Riley’s AI classes fill up quickly, and he first teaches students how the technology works before giving them a chance to try out what they’ve learned.
“We’ve included a lot of theory, best practices, copyright law, ethical and unethical uses of AI, and how to tell the difference between deepfakes and deepfakes,” Riley said. “I teach them everything from basic prompt writing to how to build multimedia to how to create data visualizations with it to podcasts and all the other cool stuff. But I let them write their own stories.”
UIC’s AI guidelines We acknowledge the positive applications of AI and emphasize the importance of students using their own knowledge, experience, and analysis in the classroom.
Audi Nico, who took the AI in Journalism course last fall just before graduating, said she has seen an increase in the use of large-scale language model AI in universities throughout her college career.
Niko, an international student from Indonesia, said that having his paper read using an AI tool helped him become a better writer. She wrote about her experience on the publishing platform medium.
“Sometimes you want to see if you need to edit this a little bit,” Nikko said. “But even with AI, I’m not going to submit something without looking at it first. The AI might make a suggestion and I’m like, ‘OK, this is a fix,’ but I also want to add my own touch.”
Riley said it provides a safe space for students to learn about AI and sets standards for how it can be used ethically.
“Putting your head in and saying, ‘AI is banned,’ doesn’t prepare students for the future of their industry,” Riley said.
In Riley’s class, students are asked to use the AI programs they learn to create images, graphs, graphics, and videos to enhance their journalism projects. Despite this knowledge, Ayoub often avoids using AI.
“I am against the use of generated images,” Ayoub said. “We’ve learned how to make and use them, but there’s no way to avoid it being fake. I think putting it in an article, even disclosing it, can undermine the truth.”
Emphasis on reliability over automation
Riley knows that AI will almost certainly be part of his students’ careers after graduation. Therefore, teaching the basics of AI is critical to developing well-rounded and well-prepared students who can use the tools.
“We’ve seen some positive results by slowly bringing people in and teaching them basic skills upfront, then having them try it out on small assignments and building towards larger projects like midterm papers and final projects.” Riley said.
Reilley teaches students and professional journalists to use AI to brainstorm, generate questions, find gaps in articles, create text-to-speech for editorial use, image and map, and transform copy into social media videos. We’ll also discuss the pros and cons of different platforms, and how to turn on privacy settings when loading new stories to avoid copyright issues.
“I’m great at creating social media posts and suggesting headlines and keywords for search engine optimization and generation engine optimization,” Riley says. “I teach my students to use this tool to brainstorm ideas. They generate ideas for midterm papers and use it to create interview questions.”
Riley teaches just one AI journalism course each semester, but he also incorporates AI into several of his other courses. For example, his sports journalism students use: notebook LM Create a podcast based on a class assignment.
“Most of our sports journalism classes are on-the-ground reporting utilizing cell phones as multimedia tools,” Riley said. “But by sprinkling in some AI tools, we can help them understand that if one tool can’t do the task, there are other options.”
Responsibility comes with recognition.
Reilley’s class has produced more than 40 projects using the AI platform. What’s the result? The Red Line project he created to share student work won the 2025 Associated College Press Pacemaker Award for Innovation.
of Associated University Press “Innovation Pacemaker is designed to encourage outside-the-box thinking and reward student media for having the courage to seize opportunities to better serve our customers, readers, and communities.”
Nikko uses AI to guide her research when writing. She wrote an article about pasta on Medium, using AI to research the origins of pasta making.
“I don’t want AI to take over my creativity and critical thinking,” she says. “I think that’s how I learned to be responsible. AI is like a best friend that guides you through your research, but it doesn’t help you through the process.”
Riley encourages students to continue learning through experimentation. As technology changes, we can adapt it and improve its use.
“I think we need to be very careful with this technology,” Riley said. “It’s incomplete. It’s learning and improving every day, but it’s not the sophisticated technology we’re used to seeing. AI has been imperfect from day one, and people aren’t used to seeing it.”
“So we spent a lot of time thinking about step-by-step prompt writing in the process of making the AI work for us rather than against us.”
