AI could help local newsrooms
It didn’t take long for the downsides of a generative AI-empowered newsroom to make themselves apparent, between CNet’s secret chatbot reviews editor last November and Buzzfeed’s subsequent mass layoffs of human staff in favor of AI-generated “content” creators.
The specter of being replaced by a “good enough AI” looms large in many a journalist’s mind, with as many as a third of the nation’s newsrooms expected to shutter by the middle of the decade.
But AI doesn’t necessarily have to be an existential threat to the field. As six research teams showed at NYU Media Lab’s AI & Local News Initiative demo day in late June, the technology may also be the key to foundationally transforming how local news is gathered and produced.
Now in its second year, the initiative is tasked with helping local news organizations “harness the power of artificial intelligence to drive success.”
It’s backed as part of a more significant $3 million grant from the Knight Foundation, which funds four such programs in partnership with the Associated Press, Brown Institute’s Local News Lab, NYC Media Lab, and the Partnership on AI.
This year’s cohort included a mix of teams from academia and private industry, coming together throughout the 12-week development course to build “AI applications for local news to empower journalists, support the sustainability of news organizations, and provide quality information for local news audiences,” NYU Tandon’s news service reported.
“There’s value in bringing together people who are working on these problems from a lot of different angles,” Matt Macvey, Community and Project Lead for the initiative, told Engadget, “and that’s what we’ve tried to facilitate.”
“It also creates an opportunity because … if these news organizations that are doing good work can keep communicating their value and maintain trust with their readers,” he continued…