As Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology continues to advance, concerns about its impact on journalism are intensifying. With AI increasingly used in newsrooms and creative fields alike, questions are surfacing: Will it steal our jobs? Could it eventually replace human creativity?
Leeds Trinity University (LTU) alumni working as TV journalists shared their thoughts on whether AI truly poses a threat to the profession at the university’s annual Journalism & Media Week.
Charley Bergman, a producer at ITV Calendar expressed doubts about AI’s reliability. “Personally I don’t see AI being used any more (than usual) in my role. I don’t think it’s trustworthy enough and I wouldn’t want to lose the creativity,” said Bergman. She added, “AI can’t produce the sort of creativity that humans can or build the connections. I think maybe it can be used as a fact-checking tool in the future but I wouldn’t want it to be how we write articles.”
AI’s fact-checking abilities remain uncertain. AI systems rely on processing large amounts of digital data to generate their output, and without effective filtering mechanisms, these systems may end up producing misinformation by absorbing inaccurate or biased information. When Originality.ai tested the fact-checking abilities of 6 popular AI models, the results revealed that the highest accuracy model peaked at just 72.3% success, while GPT-4 followed at 64.9%. This variability shows that AI has a long way to go when it comes to reliably verifying facts.
In Bergman’s experience, AI’s influence has also become noticeable in the job market. “We’ve had a lot of applications recently for a job and it was really obvious that quite a lot of people used AI in their job applications,” she said. “We don’t necessarily look so positively on it and maybe in the future, it’ll probably be used more but for us, we would rather learn more about who someone is rather than AI.”
The rise of AI in journalism is significant. A recent Press Gazette report found that just over a third of News UK staff are using AI tools daily. This trend reflects a growing shift towards AI for assistance with repetitive tasks, research, and simple content creation. Grace McGrory, a broadcast journalist at BBC Look North remains cautious about AI’s role in journalism. “I don’t think AI will ever replace journalism as it is,” said McGrory. “Although AI can be used in really positive ways… I don’t think it will ever replace integrity.”
For many, AI’s presence raises concerns over its potential to blur the lines between genuine journalism and AI-generated content. “I see AI being used a lot on social media. I think if people don’t understand that AI work is AI, it could be a threat to the industry in a way because when you’re just scrolling through social media, you don’t realise these people aren’t real journalists” McGrory said.
While AI’s presence in journalism is growing, for now, the role it plays varies widely across organisations. Bergman and McGrory’s perspectives highlight the ongoing debate about AI’s utility and limitations in journalism, particularly its lack of creativity and human connection. For many journalists, AI is seen as a supplementary tool rather than a replacement, as they emphasise that the heart of journalism lies with the people who tell the stories.