• by Ray Schultz , September 21, 2023

Newsrooms worldwide are warming up to AI. More than 75% use it in at least one of four key areas: news gathering, production and distribution. And almost as many see opportunity in gen AI, according to Generating Change: A global survey of what organizations are doing with AI, from the JouralismAI initiative at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). 

One third of news organizations have an institutional AI strategy or were developing one. And at least 80% foresee a larger role for AI in newsrooms of the future.

But 60% are concerned about the ethical implications of AI regarding editorial quality and issues such as algorithmic bias. And only around 33% believe their publications are ready to deal with the many challenges of adoption.  

Moreover, AI remains unevenly distributed among large and small newsrooms, and among Global South and Global North countries, the study notes.  

And, the economic and social benefits are concentrated in the Global North, it adds.  

Overall, 80% of the respondents expect a larger role for AI in newsrooms in the future. They expect AI to influence:

• Fact checking and disinformation analysis
• Content personalization and automation
• Text summarization and generation 
• Using chatbots to conduct preliminary interviews and gauge public sentiment on issues. 

But publishers state that cross-department collaboration is essential, and that knowledge gaps must be bridged across teams in the newsroom if AI integration is to be achieved. 

And, as in a 2019 survey, most agreed on the need for a human in the loop. 

JournalismAI is a global initiative of Polis, the journalism think tank at LSE, and is supported by the Google News Initiative.

The report is based on a survey of 105 news and media organizations from 46 countries between April and July 2023, with support from the Google News Initiative. Of the publications polled, 28% were newspapers, 20% publishing groups, 16% broadcasters, 13% news agencies, 7% magazines and 16% other.  

It was written by Charlie Beckett and Mira Yaseen.