Brit Newspaper Giant Fills Space With AI-Assisted Articles (theregister.com) 28
Reach, the owner of the UK's Daily Mirror and Daily Express tabloids among other newspapers, has started publishing articles with the help of AI software on one of its regional websites as it scrambles to cut costs amid slipping advertising revenues. The Register reports: Three stories written with the help of machine-learning tools were published on InYourArea.co.uk, which produces feeds of nearby goings-on in Blighty. One piece, titled Seven Things to do in Newport, is a listicle pulling together information on places and activities available in the eponymous sunny Welsh resort city. Reach CEO Jim Mullen said the machine-written articles are checked and approved by human editors before they're published online.
"We produced our first AI content in the last ten days, but this is led by editorial," he said, according to The Guardian. "It was all AI-produced, but the data was obviously put together by a journalist, and whether it was good enough to publish was decided by an editor." "There are loads of ethics [issues] around AI and journalistic content," Mullen admitted. "The way I look at it, we produce lots of content based on actual data. It can be put together in a well-read [piece] that I think AI can do. We are trying to apply it to areas we already get traffic to allow journalists to focus on content that editors want written."
Mullen's comments have been questioned by journalists, however, given that Reach announced plans to slash hundreds of jobs in January. The National Union of Journalists said 102 editorial positions would be cut, putting 253 journalists at risk, whilst 180 vacancies would be withdrawn.
"We produced our first AI content in the last ten days, but this is led by editorial," he said, according to The Guardian. "It was all AI-produced, but the data was obviously put together by a journalist, and whether it was good enough to publish was decided by an editor." "There are loads of ethics [issues] around AI and journalistic content," Mullen admitted. "The way I look at it, we produce lots of content based on actual data. It can be put together in a well-read [piece] that I think AI can do. We are trying to apply it to areas we already get traffic to allow journalists to focus on content that editors want written."
Mullen's comments have been questioned by journalists, however, given that Reach announced plans to slash hundreds of jobs in January. The National Union of Journalists said 102 editorial positions would be cut, putting 253 journalists at risk, whilst 180 vacancies would be withdrawn.
AS (Score:2)
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Does the White Drinking Class read the papers?
No one will notice (Score:4, Insightful)
I wouldn't be at all shocked to find that ChatGPT can regurgitate an article just as well (or even better) than most of the people at those publications. The AI might even torture the truth a lot less and produce something closer to objective.
Re: No one will notice (Score:2)
"I wouldn't be at all shocked to find that ChatGPT can regurgitate an article just as well (or even better) than most of the people at those publications. The AI might even torture the truth a lot less and produce something closer to objective."
- "ChatGPT has been saying some dangerous things. We better twirl the knobs so it aligns with the correct way of political thinking."
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objective to what? that prediction model of ChatGPT is consistent in only one thing: writing incorrect statements, stating this as fact which are wrong
Re:No one will notice (Score:4, Informative)
The Mirror and the Express are both "tabloid" newspapers, as in most of what they print is bullshit. The Mirror is left leaning and mostly posts stuff about how terrible the right wing government is, as well as soft porn and gossip. The Express pretends to be a bit more upmarket, but it's mostly just right wing outrage stories that aren't actually true, as well as soft porn and gossip.
From that perspective using AI to write stories makes sense. The journalistic content, the kind of research and interviewing that AI can't do, is minimal. The articles follow a fairly standard formula, several paragraphs of outrage followed by a few distorted facts at the end.
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What things like ChatGPT may be really good at, ultimately, is taking the same basic information and massaging the shit out of it so that one article can become two, three, or four, all told with the "right" facts emphasized for different audiences. The same way media pushes agendas with every story these days, we can just skip over having a human massage the facts into an acceptable narrative. Feed the computer the facts, and the computer spits out the "corrected" story for left leaning / right leaning aud
Probably better than their usual content (Score:5, Informative)
These are trash papers dealing in sensationalism.
I would imaging the AI content is probably better (clearer, balanced, better written) than their usual.
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You'll notice the headlines are getting more realistic. Instead of "written by an AI" it's now "AI assisted".
I've noticed that "written by an AI" has come to mean "I really wrote it myself, but I want those sweet clicks" or "Here is a heavily edited version of the thing I generated, please be impressed".
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The Express is basically Fox News in print, even down to the "we know we're lying but that's what the plebs want."
The Mirror is trash too with its "Temperatures to hit -20C next week, honest" headlines.
Neither of these are newspapers and the fact they have the same owner says everything. They're pointlessly dishonest schlock.
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I expect soon there will be AI generated Page 2 Girls as well.
Hope they are well rewarded. (Score:2)
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A cheap way to get paper for window cleaning.
Surprised that they didn't do it years ago (Score:2)
It's a bright future. (Score:1)
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Online news has been reduced to Internet trolls. (Score:1)
A novel idea (Score:4, Insightful)
I on the other hand would like to have an AI that takes an article from a given source, removes all the "human-interest" angles, emotionally-charged wording that always feels like a barely-covert attempt to nudge the reader towards coming a certain conclusion "all by themself", and the journo-mastubatory "narrative" - then condenses the pure facts out of the remainder and comes up with a summary that can be read in a minute or two (if that much factual matter remains...). I would even be prepared to pay a few shekels for such a service, as opposed to The Media that never quite lived up to the need. Even if taking into consideration that this still might not provide a balanced, exhaustive treatment of the subject and so would require more reading elsewhere.
For an advanced version, the AI could summarize the main knowledge holes of the article and suggest other material that would complement the shortcomings. Or, at least summarize the leaning of the writer and the direction s/he wants to push you to, then suggest more articles with opposite leanings.
How current are the articles? (Score:2)
Just how current is the news they report likely to be? ChatGPT, when asks, gladly tells me that:
"As of my knowledge cutoff date of September 2021, I have been trained on a vast amount of information..."
This reminds me (Score:2)
In a desk drawer we found a stack of British tabloids, they were all at least a year old but because they never publish news reading them was just as entertaining as if they were fresh.
"Ethically sourced" journalism (Score:2)
What I think journalists should do is to develop a certain set of formal standards, something vaguely like the ISO standards in engineering, which assure the reader of a certain degree of quality. These could include the following, for example:
1) No AI was used in the writing of this article
2) The author of the article was paid a certain minimum rate for writing it
3) Potential conflicts of interest are listed at the end of the article (if none exist, this is declared at the end of the article-- something w
They're tabloids, as in supermarket type (Score:2)
If the National Enquirer did that, who'd notice?
Fortunately, the worlds *only* reliable newspaper, the Weekly World News (they say so themselves), is still written by humans....
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And just to be sure, I emailed the CEO of the Weekly World News, begging him to assure us that the WWN would never use chatbots to write stories. He emailed me back, saying, "Never!!".
*phew*