Better journalism if AI frees reporters from routine tasks

dubai — Smart machines and automation will enhance the quality of journalism but pose challenges for journalists while fighting fake news, a media expert said.

Speaking on the first day of the 17th Arab Media Forum on Tuesday, Lisa Gibbs, director of News Partnerships at The Associated Press (AP), said that Artificial Intelligence (AI) has helped reporters in the West invest more time in working on investigative and newsworthy stories, eliminating the “routine part” of their job.

While AI helped spot fake news, technology remains a powerful tool for those seeking to create fake news. Gibbs urged reporters to stay on top of new technologies to build a tool that will enable them spot fake news.

“Technology is getting better in helping people create fake photos that are increasingly hard to detect. In automated propaganda, text stories that resemble fake news is now easier to create. We have to step up our efforts in spotting fake stories,” said Gibbs.

She added that AI has not eliminated jobs but increased the efficiency of reporters and video producers through different tools that allowed machines to write different versions of one story and create videos of related footage using keywords.

There’s a technology that turns text into videos through using keywords. Our human journalists are still needed to edit the videos and fix mistakes.” Lisa Gibbs, director of News Partnerships, AP

Smart machines, Gibbs said, allowed AP to produce a higher volume of stories with higher speed and efficiency.

AI will allow reporters to shift their focus from producing short stories or writing several versions of the same stories for different platforms, to spending more time on personal stories that resonate with the public.

The automation committee is also developing tools like social listening, where machines will search large data sets faster to detect what are the talking points of the public, and allows the newsroom to assess the veracity of what people use on social media.

Not a replacement for human work

Technology advancements, however, will never replace the human work. “There’s a technology that turns text into videos through using keywords. Our human journalists are still needed to edit the videos and fix mistakes,” said Gibbs.

“The idea is to let humans do what they’re good at and let machines do what they’re good at, which is processing information faster and more efficiently.”

Gibbs stressed. “We need to understand that technologies change, but standards don’t. AI is as susceptible to errors as humans are,” she said.