A new study from Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism highlights how news outlets are using AI and how journalists currently feel about the impact of the tech on journalism.
The report, which surveyed 1004 UK journalists from August to November 2024, found that over half of UK journalists (56 percent) use AI at work at least once a week.
Over a quarter (27 percent) of journalists use it ‘less frequently’ and only 16 percent have never used AI at work.
Most respondents (57 percent) reported using only third-party AI tools, with a fraction (9 percent) saying they use in-house tools (9 percent) or a mix of both (34 percent).
What Do Journalists Use AI For in the Newsroom?
The task where AI is most frequently used (49 percent of journalists) is transcription and captioning of audio and text – for interviews, for example.
A third of journalists (33 percent) use AI for translation and 30 percent use it for copy editing and grammar checks.
AI tools are also used for researching stories (22 percent), idea brainstorming (16 percent), generating parts of text (16 percent), fact checking (12 percent), and generating a first draft of an article (10 percent).
A very small percentage use AI for audio generation (4 percent) and video generation (2 percent).
Journalist Attitudes to AI
Journalists who are frequent AI users are more likely to believe they work on low-level tasks too often.
Despite this use, the report finds UK journalists tend to be pessimistic about the impact of AI on journalism – with 62 percent seeing it as a ‘large’ or ‘very large’ threat, and only 15 percent seeing it as an opportunity.
When it comes to trust, more than half of respondents (60 percent) said they are ‘extremely concerned’ about the possible negative impact of AI on public trust in journalism.
More AI Knowledge Equals More Confidence?
When it comes to the demographic of journalists that use AI frequently, younger and male journalists use AI “slightly” more often, with those from higher levels of management also using AI tools more.
Almost all demographic groups of respondents feel AI is more of a threat than an opportunity, but more senior journalists with higher levels of AI knowledge and who regularly use AI are more likely to see it as an opportunity over a threat.
Comparatively, differences in levels of concern amongst different groups were low, but concern appeared higher among those with more AI knowledge.
