Artificial intelligence has been in the making for a long time, but it’s only been in the last few months that it has really caught the attention of the media and the masses. There are a lot of misconceptions about AI, especially concerning what it’s actually capable of and the areas in which it’s still lacking. Too many people feel that AI – at least current iterations – is a powerful tool that has all the answers we seek, but we are still many years off before artificial intelligences are capable of reasoning and solutions to many of the issues that we face today.
AI is advancing at an unprecedented rate, and while there is still much work to do, there’s no denying that AI is already having a profound impact on many aspects of modern life, including journalism. In fact, many experts believe that AI may one day permanently change journalism and media, at least as we know it, which is something we will explore here.
Personalisation
Anyone who has used Google’s services will probably have heard of “personalised ads” which refers to the way that Google’s ad systems provide relevant advertisements depending on a person’s search history, as well as other criteria. This personalisation is expected to reach even further as AI is incorporated into news media outlets, which will begin using machine learning and AI to deliver news that a reader is most likely to consume. There is a certain amount of fear about this in particular, as many believe it will continue to strengthen negative and potentially dangerous biases and beliefs.
Metadata
Metadata is another word that gets thrown around a lot, but there aren’t many people that are sure what it pertains to. Metadata is the data that’s attached to a file, whether it’s a document, a photo, a song, a video celebrating the latest mega casino bonuses, or any other content that gets uploaded to the internet.
More and more media outlets – CBS being a good example – are making use of analysis tools that use the power of AI to examine the items that are uploaded to classify and categorise the content – and they do this using metadata. For a long time, this kind of work has always been expensive and required countless man hours, but thanks to modern AI, the same tasks can be accomplished at a fraction of the cost and time.
Automated Content
The automation of content creation is what has so many writers and journalists worried about losing their jobs. And while we’ve already seen quite a lot of content automation in recent years, we’re still quite far off before writers begin losing out to AI.
But more and more media outlets are focussing on using AI to generate articles, although it’s worth keeping in mind that AI has yet to perfect fact-checking, which is perhaps one of its biggest disadvantages at the moment, and why it requires human oversight.
