Headlines You Should Know
Is Journalism Creating a Playbook for AI Integration?
Historically challenged by changes to technology and business models, the journalism industry may be showing the larger communications field a blueprint for adopting AI. The AI Journalism Lab at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY announced its inaugural cohort of journalists, media leaders, academics, and AI practitioners on Friday. The lab will run through the fall and develop ways to give journalists “the tools needed to streamline operations, maximize efficiency, and foster long-term sustainability.”
That last word typically refers to the environment, but in journalism, it’s more about the industry’s survival. That means thinking outside the box and finding new revenue streams. The Financial Times, for example, is the latest publication to partner with OpenAI and include a licensing agreement for its content. While some outlets and authors are suing for copyright infringement, others are looking to strike a deal that brings financial rewards.
For communications professionals, these developments are worth noting. Experimenting, training alongside tech practitioners, and monetizing with AI will likely look different for your organization than a media outlet’s newsroom, but those are key steps that most businesses will ultimately take if they haven’t already.
Getting in on AI early (and it is still relatively early) means a shorter learning curve than waiting until it proliferates even more. According to a survey by The Verge, Americans’ AI usage grew by nearly 10 percentage points in the last year, approaching half of the public, and more than half of users have found several use cases.
Learning from the media’s ongoing experimentation with AI, communications professionals can navigate their own implementations more effectively, understanding what it takes to make these tools generate efficiency and drive new business.
Elsewhere …
- AI Developers Adopt New Child Exploitation Safety Measures
- Brand Marketers Grapple with AI’s Influence
- LISTEN: How a Futurist Thinks About AI for Humanity and Business
- Mysterious ‘gpt2-chatbot’ AI Model Baffles Experts: A Breakthrough or Mere Hype?
- Catholic Group Defrocks AI Priest After It Gave Strange Answers
- Ohio Uses AI to Eliminate Unnecessary Words in State Administrative Code
Tips and Tricks
Finding the best sources
What’s happening: AI is reframing how people search for answers on the internet and displacing traditional search engines. According to The Verge’s survey, 61% of Gen Z and 53% of Millennials use AI tools rather than search engines to learn more about a topic.
Why it’s important: Research can be a time-consuming part of content creation, and you want to make sure you have the most recent and relevant sources.
Try this: For general knowledge, tools like ChatGPT or Claude can give you a brief overview of a topic (GPT-4 Turbo’s knowledge cutoff is December 2023, and Claude 3’s is August 2023). ChatGPT can also browse the web (sometimes you have to remind it of this capability) to find more current sources, but Claude cannot access the internet.
Perplexity.ai offers a summarized answer to queries, rather than just a list of links, and cites its sources. You can even narrow your search to academic papers, YouTube videos, or Reddit discussion threads by clicking on the “focus” button when you start a new search.
If what you’re looking for is the latest news sources, however, Google News still reigns supreme. For now.
Quote of the Week
“I wanted to see whether in fact AI can do more than just help me organize my thoughts, but actually start injecting new thoughts. And I was like, you know? That could work! I ended up writing the scene myself. But the idea was the AI’s.”
— Author Chris Anderson to NPR in a story about writers who are more curious than concerned about AI