What Could/Should Be the Role of AI in the Newsroom?

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AI is about to impact the news business this year significantly. From how news stories and videos are created to on-camera talent and how consumers get their news, the most significant change in the history of the news business is taking place now.

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“People are reacting to AI as the worst thing that has ever happened to humanity or welcoming it as the most wonderful god-send,” says Judy Parnall, head of standards & industry at BBC. “‘AI in the Newsroom: The Good, Bad, and What’s Ahead for the Industry,” features leaders from major and diverse news organizations looking objectively at where we are in that spectrum.” 

“We know we can’t avoid it. The question is how can we harness it for good to improve the process of news gathering and to increase trust in the truth of our reporting.”

Parnall moderates the panel, which also features Sinclair CIO Scott Ehrlich; Christina Hartman, VP of News Standards and Editorial Operations at Scripps News; Mohamed Moawad, managing editor at Al Jazeera; and Scott Zabieski, chief content officer at Channel 1.

“We need to use these tools with our eyes open. This discussion will spark ideas to help us all think about what we need to consider to ensure that the veracity of our brand and the news we output is not called into question.”

Some news organizations are already creating news stories using AI and/or have virtual news anchors reading out stories. Inevitably, more AI will creep into news process and news presentation as broadcasters are faced with the pressures of cutting budgets.

“It’s about understanding the risks and putting in safeguards, and that will change according to what is appropriate for your brand.”

Parnall is also speaking at the session, “Content Credentials – New Requirements for Media Provenance Labels for Gen AI Content,”where she will present the latest on C2PA, the content credentials standardization initiative in which she personally and the BBC as a whole has played a major role.

“All news organizations will look at the issue in their own way but quite a few groups have come together to share common ground within the C2PA. We have common tools which can share with the industry as needed to help address the threat and the potential of AI.”

The idea of media provenance or data integrity has been gaining ground in the tech community as a way of combatting the rush of AI-generated fakes. It is news media that is particularly vulnerable to this sort of attack (truth being the first casualty of war and also of political elections).

So, in a bid to take the initiative, broadcasters including the BBC, along with Canada’s CBC and the New York Times, joined forces to ensure their own integrity as a trustworthy news source did not fall victim.

“What we’re seeing is a really fundamental shift in the media ecosystem that we need to act on,” says Parnall. “I kind of wish the elections [including UK and the US] were not this year. We’ll be in a better position in 2025 when efforts set in train a few years ago really come to fruition.”

The BBC has stated that it will develop its own “ethical algorithms” to serve as common values and proactively deploy AI on its terms as it transforms itself to increase relevance in an internet-only world, according to director-general Tim Davie in a recent state of the nation speech.

Davie warned against complacency, arguing that social and civilizational fabric was under threat from external forces. He said that “over 70% of countries do not have a free press” and “hostile states…are weaponizing disinformation and using AI for democratic disruption”, while “algorithms monetise controversy, driven, understandably, by the necessity to secure traffic as an overriding commercial objective”.

He said that AI would play a key role in the corporation’s future, for example by enabling the BBC to translate and reformat content, but also noted that the broadcaster had a duty to counter disinformation, particularly by investing in fact-checking.

“We will proactively deploy AI on our terms, always holding on to our published principles,” he said. “Never compromising human creative control, supporting rights holders and sustaining our editorial standards, but proactively launching tools that help us build relevance. We are now working with a number of major tech companies on BBC-specific pilots which we will be deploying the most promising ones in coming months.”