Artificial intelligence tech threatens to take our eyeballs even further away from the outlets which produce news - but it's also a tool they can use to make more of it. This week Stuff - which has warned AI could wreck the business of journalism - used Chat GPT to write a stories about readers' opinions. Mediawatch asks an unimpressed editor if we all just have to get used to this now.

Artificial intelligence technology threatens to take our eyeballs even further away from the outlets which produce news - but it's also a tool they can use to make more of it. This week Stuff - which has warned AI could wreck the business of journalism - used Chat GPT to write stories about readers' opinions. Mediawatch asks an unimpressed editor if we all just have to get used to this now.

Readers browsing the country's most popular news site were beckoned by an enticing headline last week.

"Stuff poll says Christchurch NZ's best place," it began, before adding, "New Plymouth not happy about it".

The headline contained two crucial selling points for news: controversy and a metaphysical conundrum. First of all, is Christchurch truly New Zealand's best place? Could it be that Stuff reader polls are somehow wrong?

But more importantly, how is New Plymouth - a metropolitan centre not blessed with the gift of consciousness - able to express unhappiness? Does a cloud roll off Mt Taranaki and hang over the city to signal its displeasure? Do the waves crash more angrily on Fitzroy Beach?

The story didn't answer those questions, perhaps because it was written by another entity which has not been awakened to the joy, confusion, and dread of mortal existence.

A standfirst at the top of the story explains that it was assembled by a robot.

"This story was summarised from original Stuff reporting and published member comments using generative AI tool Chat GPT with oversight and editing from Stuff journalists," it said.

This may have struck some as a slightly strange thing for Stuff to publish, given its leaders have been outspoken about the threat AI poses to journalism.

Its chief executive Sinead Boucher warned about a AI-driven potential media-pocaplyse at a recent select committee hearing on the proposed Fair Digital News Bargaining Bill.

"In this last year we have seen the rise of AI technology that has been hailed as a gamechanger for humanity by the tech companies that own it but which at its core has an egregious wholesale theft of our content and our intellectual property," she said. "For the news media globally this development is looking increasingly like an extinction-level event."…

Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details

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