Artificial intelligence and journalism prove to be stepping forward together, as a former Filipino journalist and Nieman fellow at Harvard has reportedly created a new AI tool that helps journalists quickly summarize audit reports using booming technology.
Former GMA News Online editor-in-chief and Harvard University Nieman Fellow Jaemark Tordecilla recently developed an AI program, built on top of OpenAI's ChatGPT, that is specifically designed to summarize audit reports of Philippine government agencies for journalists.
According to Tordecilla, while reports from the Philippines' Commission on Audit (COA) likely contain evidence of corruption, government agency documents can be dense and difficult to read and understand.
(Photo: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images) A new survey has revealed that many news organizations globally are using generative AI in their works.
Reporters in newsrooms all over the world, not just in the Philippines, are frequently overworked and compelled to multitask and cover a variety of topics at once. Tordecilla wanted to find a way to help reporters maximize their efficiency and reduce the amount of time spent poring over these reports.
His application, called COA Beat Assistant, was created with the help of features included in ChatGPT's premium edition, which let users modify the AI model without knowing any code. Tordecilla set it up to summarize content from the lengthy executive summaries of the COA, which can run up to 50 pages.
The outcomes seem encouraging. According to Tordecilla's February essay for the Reuters Institute at the University of Oxford, a writer who frequently covers corruption stories based on state audit reports calculated that COA Beat Assistant helped reduce the research time by as much as 80%.
Tordecilla's AI-powered tool comes as fears of AI replacing jobs, including journalists, only continue to rise. While studies suggest that people still prefer news content from humans, AI journalism only continues to gain traction.
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Journalism-Powered AI
Axel Springer and OpenAI announced a "first of its kind" partnership last December that integrates recent articles into ChatGPT and trains its generative AI models on the publisher's content, the Berlin-based publisher of magazines like Politico and Business Insider.
Through the partnership, ChatGPT users worldwide will receive summaries of carefully chosen international news items, including otherwise paid content, from Axel Springer's media brands, which include POLITICO, BUSINESS INSIDER, and the European domains BILD and WELT.
In response to user inquiries, ChatGPT will provide attribution and links to the entire post for transparency and more information, according to OpenAI.
While the partnership can be viewed in a positive light, journalism has long been threatened by AI and digital media. Since the emergence of digital platforms more than ten years ago, there has reportedly been a struggle between tech businesses and the news industry, which has led to tech platforms making money while many news organizations have gone out of business.
Journalism's Woes
According to TIME, research conducted by Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism, Media, and Integrated Marketing Communications, the United States has lost nearly two-thirds of its newspaper journalists and nearly a third of its newspapers since 2005.
Nations all over the world are beginning to take action to compel big digital companies to help their regional media sectors. In Canada, a rule forcing digital corporations to compensate news outlets for any content posted on their platforms was passed in June 2023.
A similar bill was already approved in Australia in 2021. Senators Amy Klobuchar, a Democrat from Minnesota, and John Kennedy, a Republican from Louisiana, who serve on the Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology, and the Law, have both suggested legislation that is similar in the United States.
Related Article: News Organizations Globally Believe Generative AI Presents New Opportunities for Journalism, Survey Reveals
(Photo: Tech Times)
