How much AI should a newspaper use?

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is an ever-growing, ever-changing, ubiquitous part of our lives. It is transforming the way many things are done, for better or worse. It’s not going anywhere, and will only continue to evolve. It advances every day. In the space of time between when you start reading this editorial and you finish it, AI will have likely evolved with a new major breakthrough.
As more and more people are relying on AI, people within the newspaper industry are grappling with how much we should use it in our newsrooms. At the present time, we at the Custer County Chronicle use AI for one thing only—transcription of notes/interviews. This can be a great time saver for us, as we don’t have to play back an entire interview and type it all out. Rather, the app Otter, or even your iPhone, can provide a transcript of your interview or phone call. It can even, for the most part, identify different people speaking.
That “for the most part” is a key caveat, however. For as great as AI is, it’s not the end-all, be-all. It is not perfect. It has its flaws. It doesn’t hear or listen very well sometimes. It “hallucinates.” Sometimes, it flat out makes stuff up. These are all things we have to be wary of when we are having it making a transcription of an interview. If there are any questions, we always listen back to make sure that is exactly what was said.
We have never, and we dare say, will never, use AI to write articles. Doing so is fraught with pitfalls, and AI cannot read the room. It can’t discern sarcasm, anger, or any other emotions. There may be a time we use AI to do boring and repetitive tasks that we don’t really enjoy doing anyway, such as typing out notes. But to expect it to capture the essence of a meeting, or the passion of a mother as she talks about her child, etc., is foolish. There are journalists who have tried it, however, and they have paid the price.
We are sure we have all heard of some sort of example of this. Not long ago a cub reporter at the Cody Enterprise in nearby Cody, Wyo., was busted for using fabricated quotes in his stories. Perhaps the AP described the situation best when it said “journalists have derailed their careers by making up quotes or facts in stories long before AI came about. But this latest scandal illustrates the potential pitfalls and dangers that AI poses to many industries, including journalism, as chatbots can spit out spurious if somewhat plausible articles with only a few prompts.”
We here at Southern Hills Publishing can pledge to you that our reporters will never use AI to write our articles, and we certainly won’t use them to make up quotes that don’t exist. That discussion has already been had in our news room. If you’re that lazy, just quit.
We don’t know for sure how AI will affect our newsroom, but we are sure it will. If and when we take steps to use more AI, we will be sure to let the public know. It’s something we have only dipped our toe into, and we want to be sure our integrity and professionalism are not tainted by turning to AI to do our work for us. We want to tell the stories. That’s why we are here in the first place.