Today on Midday, guest host and WYPR news anchor Gabe Ortis looks at the use of AI in the newsroom.
Nearly 10 percent of U.S. newspaper articles contain at least some text created by artificial intelligence, according to researchers at the University of Maryland.
But at the Baltimore Sun earlier this month, we saw something novel: two news articles fully written by AI and edited by humans.
Workers with the Washington-Baltimore News Guild are not happy, saying the move raises questions about transparency, quality and the future of local journalism. Members of the newsroom union join Midday to explain.
Dan Belson, a Baltimore Sun public safety reporter, is unit chair of the Baltimore Sun Guild; and Ariel Wittenberg, a public health reporter with POLITICO'S E&E News, is unit chair of the POLITICO-E&E (PEN) News Guild.
Sun publisher and editor-in-chief Trif Alatzas, in a statement sent to Midday Monday morning, described the newsroom's use of AI for editorial content as "innovation," and said the Sun intends to be transparent as it continues to explore ways to use AI-powered tools.
He noted that the news organization does "not have plans to replace reporting or writing from our journalists."
Here is the Sun's full statement about its use of AI-generated news copy:
"We thought this method provided an opportunity to try an alternative way to analyze these subjects. Our staff reviewed the work and discussed how to ensure we were transparent with readers. One reader said he appreciated The Sun embracing such innovation and encouraged us to try it more; he added we must thoroughly review future efforts given the error we should have caught and have since corrected. Another reader told us to knock it off. We plan to work with our staff to find various ways to use the technology responsibly to aid our reporting and better serve readers. There might be some mistakes along the way, but we plan to learn from them and be transparent about our efforts. To ignore this powerful tool would be a mistake.
"We are currently exploring more ways to use the technology and working with some of our journalists to experiment with tools to assist with data analyzation, summarizing documents, etc. We are particularly focused on the automation of various functions both on the news and business side of our work. Things are moving so fast that we believe experimentation and testing is an important part of what we do moving forward. We want to encourage our staff to find opportunities to use the technology to assist our teams. We do not have plans to replace reporting or writing from our journalists. We hope these tools help us dive deeper and challenge us to think bigger. Our focus remains on humans approving anything before we publish and that we are transparent with readers on how we use the technology and learn from it. We don’t pretend to be experts and we expect there will be growing pains. But we want to encourage people to try things responsibly as we move forward. That’s the kind of newsroom we want to build on."
Midday plans to invite a representative of the Baltimore Sun on the show in the near future to discuss in greater detail the role the company sees for AI in its newsroom.
