GenerativeAIis entering the media and hacks are getting worried.
(At least, thats what Im telling my overlords.)
Other journalists, however, arent as blessed.
The publisher, Reach, has posted several AI-written articles on thelocal news site In Your Area.
That is responsible use of AI.
Unsurprisingly, Mullen told human journalists they have no need to worry.
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The company is far from the only media brand to bring AI to the pressroom.
Heres how other outlets are experimenting with automation.
In 2014, the company began automatically generating summaries of earnings reports.
The workers had been curating and editing stories for the homepages of MSN and the Edge web app.
The Cupertino company sacked the journalistsdespite warningsthat substituting them for software was risky.
The warnings proved prescient: MSN went on to run arange of bogus stories.
Highlights included Bigfoot sightings, Mermaid captures, and Grimes suing Elon Musk.
CNET
Tech site CNET wasrecently caughtposting machine-written stories.
The company never publicly announced the move, butcame cleanafter an outcry from critics.
CNET described the initiative as a mere experiment.
And like many experiments, the results were unpredictable.
The text generators were making very dumb errors,according to Futurism.
CNET was forced to add lengthy corrections to some of the articles.
The move came after another round of redundancies at the struggling publisher.
The initiative is a collaboration with ChatGPT creatorOpenAI.
In what will surely reassure BuzzFeed staff, ChatGPTrecently claimedthat AI will never entirely replace human journalists.
Most famously, our erstwhile colleagueSatoshi Nakabotoproduced automated reports on cryptocurrencies.
Mercifully, the loathsome Nakaboto was laid off years ago.
Undoubtedly, this is a far more fitting role for automated media but then, I would say that.
Story byThomas Macaulay
Thomas is the managing editor of TNW.
He leads our coverage of European tech and oversees our talented team of writers.
Away from work, he e(show all)Thomas is the managing editor of TNW.
He leads our coverage of European tech and oversees our talented team of writers.
Away from work, he enjoys playing chess (badly) and the guitar (even worse).
