It is no secret that artificial intelligence (ai) is changing how we operate as a society. It is already impacting the way we live and work. In this blog post, we will explore how ai is transforming the business of news.

The news industry is under duress. Advertising revenue, the lifeblood of most news organisations, is in decline. This is due to a perfect storm of factors, including the rise of social media, the growth of ad-blocking technology, and the migration of readers to mobile devices (where advertising rates are lower). 

In response, news organisations are turning to artificial intelligence to help them cut costs and increase revenues. For example, The Washington Post has developed an ai-powered news app called Heliograf. The app automates the production of stories about sporting events, elections, and other data-driven topics. 

Heliograf is just one example of how ai is being used by the news industry. Here are some other ways that ai is changing the business of news:

1. Automated fact-checking
2. Generating personalised news feeds
3. Automated content generation
4. Video editing and production
5. Sentiment analysis of social media data

Interesting huh? You may also find it interesting that I didn’t write that. An AI did. 

Here’s what I wrote: 

Let’s be clear. AI is often touted as the thing of the future, something we need to keep an eye on. I disagree. It’s here now and we need to be fully aware of the possibilities — and the pitfalls. Here are five examples of AI that have practical uses right now. 

The AI gave me two other options: 

It is no secret that artificial intelligence (ai) is changing how we operate as a society. It is already impacting the way we live and work. In this blog post, we will explore how ai is transforming the business of news.

OR

It was only a matter of time before artificial intelligence infiltrated the business world — and that time is now. AI has already begun to change how we operate, and the field of journalism is no exception. In this blog post, we will explore some of the ways in which AI is transforming the news industry. We will discuss how ai can help journalists gather data, analyze it, and create more accurate stories. We will also look at how AI can be used to improve customer service for news organizations.

All I did was choose and then hit enter a few times. I didn’t change a word. 

It’s pretty good huh? And that is the point I want to make clear: AI isn’t some far off technology. It’s here and ready to use. Here are the five practical examples of AI that can be used now, as I have written them:  

1. Automated article writing: AP, Gannett, WaPo amongst others have experimented with this. One of our sponsors, United Robots, has been working on creating automated articles from start to finish since 2015. It seems to be particularly good for long-tail content such as real estate and local sports. For this blog post, I used Jaspar. Sudowrite has also been recommended to me. The former creates content and auto publishes. The latter two need a prompt by way of the first paragraph and keywords. 

2. Artificial voice: We all know Siri and Alexa. And as airpods and home devices become more prevalent, this will be a growing area for many publishers. For example, Schibsted in Norway has been working on a synthetic voice to transform its text content into a different no-screen media (more on their view of the audio opportunity here). And last week, you may have noticed in my recommended reading the AI-generated podcast of Joe Rogan and Steve Jobs (more here), which of course introduces a whole set of challenges when it comes to deep fakes and the need for verification. 

3. AI-generated images: Dall E just opened up from its beta phase and can create images to any brief within seconds.   

   

4. Automated video: AI can also be used to generate relevant videos. Make recently announced its automated AI generation tool (more here). And here are 10 tools for automated video creation. 

5. Personalised news feeds: I touched on this in my report on personalisation here and my colleague Ariane Bernard has recently gone much deeper on the topic in her excellent report on as part of the INMA Smart Data Initiative, which you can find here.

Not falling into the category of news per se but still needs to be on your radar is how humans are now being depicted realistically in images. I was first confused and then slightly wowed by my neighbour in LA Lil’ Miquela on Instagram, who can easily be dismissed as gimmicky until you see the number of followers she has and the real dollars she gets in sponsorships. 

And the gaming engine Unreal released details of the metahumans it was making available almost two years ago (watch the short video here). 

Most of what I have written about here is not new — it’s here now. And now more than ever we can look at both how this can benefit our businesses and the many ethical questions that arise.

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