For journalists, the scales weighing the pros and cons of generative AI seem to tip back and forth.  

Lately, it could be easy to feel the cons are weightier. 

Recent layoffs have been accompanied by increased uptake of AI, and last month Nine Entertainment pointed to “an extreme state of disruption because of AI” when announcing its latest round of newsroom job cuts. 

But experts tell PIJI the speedy evolution of generative AI, particularly its ability to produce news content, is not solely to blame for job losses. 

“It’s not all because of AI,” University of Canberra News & Media Research Centre director Sora Park says. 

“It’s just a continuation of what the news industry has been struggling with for the past almost two decades: not being able to find a sustainable business model in the digital era.” 

That struggle for survival was already fierce as digital platforms increasingly absorbed ad revenue relied upon by many news publishers.  

Then generative AI made a giant leap in 2022 with the launch of ChatGPT. News publishers must now fend off content-scraping bots and push through the new barriers of AI chatbots and search engine overviews to get clicks. 

That, Park says, is where the real danger to public interest journalism lies. 

“[AI] is becoming an important intermediary of news, it will affect how news is found by users,” she says. 

“We all know that AI is not developed to serve the public interest news; it’s privately owned by big tech companies motivated to make profit, so there will be a tension between that and people’s need for public interest journalism.” 

A recent News & Media Research Centre report co-authored by Park found nearly one in ten Australians say they use tools such as ChatGPT, Gemini or Perplexity to get their news, a figure broadly in line with the global average. 

Only 38 per cent of people consuming news through AI chatbots click through to news sources, lower than click-through rates on search engines (45 per cent) and slightly higher than on social and video networks (37 per cent). 

But just as much as journalists need click-throughs, AI platforms need journalists to keep producing content. 

Without journalists, AI does not have news to convey, University of Technology Sydney Centre for AI Trust & Governance postdoctoral researcher Timothy Koskie tells PIJI. 

“The AI companies are happy to watch the entire journalism [industry] collapse just to get their next quarterly revenue a little bit higher,” he says. 

“There’s no sustainability in those sort of American-derived models that they’re pursuing, but … as we saw with things like the Google News Initiative, they do eventually have to have content to refer people to.” 

Koskie says the issue is that journalists should be remunerated for their work, an avenue which AI companies have been reluctant to pursue and governments slow to enforce.  

Last month, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said Australia’s approach to AI would ensure creatives, including journalists, will retain ownership over their work, “meaning no company should use Australian creative works to train AI without the artist’s control.” 

Trust is the best defence 

For journalists looking for more job security, and for the survival of news outlets in general, Koskie says building personal trust with audiences is key. 

He says when audiences trust journalists, they will be more likely to “overcome the barriers of inconvenience” presented by digital platforms to access news content from the source. 

“[Former ABC chief election analyst] Antony Green is this famous character that people would say, ‘The election’s not over until Antony Green calls it.’ People didn’t say, ‘Until ABC calls it,’” Koskie says. 

“People don’t necessarily trust everything that comes their way, and they don’t know how to navigate what is trustworthy and what is not trustworthy… That’s where journalists can step in, but only if they can get the public’s trust. 

“And they can only do that with what appears to be an almost one-to-one, in-person interaction kind of way, where you get to know people personally.” 

Keep up to stay afloat 

Koskie says adoption of AI tools by journalists can also provide an opportunity to increase efficiency and productivity, whether by using the technology to sift through thousands of data points or using new privacy tools to protect sources. 

Park tells PIJI news organisations should embrace AI to their benefit instead of resisting the adoption of the new technology.  

Major Australian publishers have already taken this initiative, with organisations such as the ABC, Seven and Nine encouraging journalists to use in-house AI tools. 

But she says clear frameworks on the use of AI must be in place at individual organisation and broader industry levels so publishers do not breach their public service obligations. 

A human touch will always be necessary, she says. 

“There always needs to be human oversight, even if the technology evolves even further, because people have to make judgments and they have to know the context,” Park says. 

“There is a limit to what AI can replace.” 

Sezen Bakan