AI is taking over local journalism. Does it matter?

“Luigi Mangione shoots himself,” the Apple AI alert read. This was extraordinary news. The man accused of gunning-down UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in New York last December had shot himself while in jail? An astonishing, sensational development, sure to dominate the news cycle for days. 

The only snag? It didn’t happen.

The mistake was what is called in the trade an AI “hallucination”. AI models like ChatGPT analyse thousands of websites and produce summaries of what they “read”. Most of the time they get it broadly right, but occasionally they get it very wrong. This is worrying, to say the least. As well as misinforming the public, the hallucinations “have the potential to further damage trust in the news media”, according to Jonathan Bright, head of AI for public services at the Alan Turing Institute.

But it’s not just the tech giants like Apple that are going gaga over AI. Local news websites in the UK are increasingly using it to produce news stories. Reach PLC, the biggest company in local news in the UK which owns the Manchester Evening News and the Liverpool Echo, have been using it since 2023. Their “Gutenbot” rips stories from other Reach publications, changing a few words and phrases around to hide its tracks. They don’t even tell readers AI has been involved.

National World, which owns The Star, has followed suit and is now producing court reports using AI technology. And Newsquest, who are owned by the giant US news conglomerate Gannett, now uses AI for everything from generating freedom of information requests to writing headlines and “social sells”. Whichever way you look at it, AI is taking over local news.

You might think this is a good thing. The companies say the technology will be used to make reporters’ lives easier by taking over the boring, menial tasks they have to do and allow them to concentrate on investigations. But as a veteran of several rounds of job cuts at National World’s predecessors JPI Media and Johnston Press, if I was still working there I’d be less sure. Is the AI really only after the dull bits of my job? Or is it going to take my job altogether?

And then there are the mistakes. A recent BBC study asked several AI tools to summarise 100 news articles before getting specialist reporters who were experts in the subject of the article to rate each answer. Worryingly, the study found that 51% of all the AI answers were judged to have significant issues, and that 19% introduced factual errors, including incorrect statements, numbers and dates. As more and more content becomes AI generated, the system starts to feed off itself, generating ever more low value, often inaccurate content.

A friend who works for National World told me that recently, the AI they use to report on court cases identified a victim of a sexual offence in its write-up. Victims of sexual offences are granted lifelong anonymity and identifying them is one of the worst mistakes a court reporter can make. Thankfully, it was caught before it was published, but will they always be that lucky?

AI can already do a lot of things, and it will do more in the future. But will it ever be a replacement for a properly trained journalist? Just look at some of our recent stories. Could AI sensitively interview a grieving family about the death of their mother, like Victoria did for her piece about Veronica Crawford and Green Bridge Housing? Not a chance. Could AI replace David Bocking’s deep knowledge of the environment and nature in Sheffield to write something as interesting as his recent piece about parrots? You’re having a laugh. 

Proper reporting requires going to places, meeting people, being curious and sensitive. It takes time, building up trust and developing relationships. It’s not just aggregating information — it takes wisdom and skill.

And ultimately, to be a good journalist, you need to care about the people and places you report on. We do what we do because we love Sheffield. And that is one thing AI will never be capable of.

The future we choose

A lot of people worry about AI. They believe its rise is unstoppable; that in the end it will take over all aspects of life. With journalism, that would mean surrendering to a future where articles are endlessly recycled, spun out into ever more hollow “content”.

But to take this attitude is to give in, when there are simple, practical ways to prevent this coming to pass.

Because there’s an obvious reason why AI is being deployed in newsrooms across the country: it’s cheap. Very cheap. AI never goes on holiday, doesn’t need toilet breaks, and would never do anything so craven as to ask for a decent salary.

That's why, if we refuse to pay for news, this thing goes only one way: a race to the bottom. Newsrooms will swap people for bots. Fresh, surprising and vital coverage will wither on the vine.