• by Ray Schultz , Columnist, February 6, 2024

Microsoft is collaborating with several news organizations to “identify and refine the procedures and policies to use AI responsibly in newgathering and business practices.”  

That’s a tall order, given some of the AI-driven gaffes seen over the past year. But it’s a critical one given that “billions of people will vote in democratic elections worldwide.”

It's an impressive roster of groups:

• Semafor will work with Microsoft to harness AI tools to assist journalists in their research, source discovery and translation with Semafor Signals.
• The Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY will provide experienced journalists with a hybrid, tuition-free program to help them incorporate generative AI into their work and newsrooms.
• The Online News Association (ONA) will offer programming to help journalists and newsroom leaders “navigate the evolving AI ecosystem.” 
• The GroundTruth Project, which sends local journalists into newsrooms around the world through its Report for America and Report for the World programs, will add an AI track of work for its corps members through the AI in Local News initiative.
• Nota, a startup dedicated to putting AI tools into newsrooms to help improve operations, now covers more than a 100 newsrooms with support from Microsoft.

Microsoft seeks to help newsrooms “refine the procedures and policies to use AI responsibly in newsgathering and business practices,” it writes.  

It adds, “Healthy news organizations do not exist without journalists who know their communities and topics, have deep relationships with leaders in government and civic life, and understand how to reach their communities. This work is challenging – and our goal is to find ways to support journalists in this mission, not replace them.”