Exploration #107

Hate Longscrolling? Jump Around!

• If You Click Only One…

• Things to Think About…

• Things to Know About…

• And finally…

Hi all. This week we got more of an AI focus, with pieces on Adobe, Axios, Netflix and Newsweek. But first…

Webinar Recordings and Plans 

Thanks to all of you who joined us last week for our 3rd Thursday webinar last week, featuring PBS Kids and the topic of accessibility in games. If you missed any part of it, or would like to share it with colleagues, you can watch it on our Public Media Innovators PLC events page on NETA’s Public Media Learns site.

We are still debating how to approach the next 3rd Thursday webinar, as that Thursday is literally the day after the PBS Annual Meeting ends. But we’ll have a decision for you next week.

Can AI Earn Journalism’s Trust?

Some of you will remember the old Smith Barney ads from the 1980s. SB was an investment firm (living on today as “Morgan Stanley”), and their tagline (uttered by legendary actor John Houseman) was “They make money the old fashioned way. They earn it.” Of course, what does that even mean. A few financial crises later, and I think we know. But I’m still taken with the idea of earning it.

This week I’m out in the field, making media the old-fashioned way, one drone flight and one shutter click at a time. Even though there are algorithms under the surface of most of my camera gear (from the eye-tracking focus assist in my camera body to the drone’s ability to understand where it is in 3D space), those are all just tools for capturing elements the human condition. And it’s still the human connection with people on the ground in the community (any community) that ultimately makes content happen. That’s still true in a lot of our world, and it’s definitely true with journalism.

Content subject matter seems to come to me in waves, and this week a number of pieces showed up in my reading that touched on the issues related to AI and journalism. I do think AI is a significant part of journalism’s future, but I don’t think that will materialize the way we fret about today. While AI tools come into their own as a general-purpose technology, it will still be people that make journalism happen and make it mean something. But as AI becomes table stakes, I’m thinking about what it will take for AI to earn the trust of journalists. Already, early adopters are experimenting with and strategizing around AI (as you’ll see from stories this week). In public media, this is beginning to happen at the national level, but we need to be making sure it happens at the local level as well.

Okay, on to the links…

If You Click Only One…

Generative AI in Journalism: The Evolution of Newswork and Ethics in a Generative Information Ecosystem (Nicholas Diakopoulos, Hannes Cools, Charlotte Li, Natali Helberger, Ernest Kung, Aimee Rinehart, Lisa Gibbs - Associated Press via ResearchGate) - This survey-based report from the AP will be of interest if your organization engages in or supports local journalism.
—Related, from a couple of the same authors: Blueprints for Evaluating AI in Journalism

Things to Think About…

Axios Sees A.I. Coming, and Shifts Its Strategy ($) (Katie Robertson - New York Times) - I tend to eschew sharing times articles here, because of their paywall. But this one seems important. In a nutshell, Axios' AI strategy revolves around memberships and people. Sound familiar? And I'm assuming we've all noticed how they are getting increasingly local with their coverage (at least where major metros, like Denver, are concerned).

An Only Slightly Modest Proposal: If AI Companies Want More Content, They Should Fund Reporters, And Lots Of Them (Mike Masnick - TechDirt) - I had a very similar though to this coming back from the PMVG conference last week. I was thinking about the Google News Initiative and how the downstream effect of more quality journalism is better content for AI training. (It's also why I've continued to advocate for local station to allow AI bots to crawl their website for content.) I'm not necessarily saying that Google is supporting journalism to feed AI, but it does seem like a positive by-product, so why not increase investment?

Aspen & Columbia University AI and Elections Event Key Tech Takeaways (Katie Harbath - Anchor Change) - A good summary of the event (with links to the video, if you want to watch it yourself. I found this highlight especially insightful: "I'll tell you, who reads the comments. Gen. Z … But headline, comments, and then the article. Why would they be doing it in that order? Because and this is, according to them. And this research that we did, they want to know if the article is fake news. … I think increasingly ... they're looking for social signals about how to situate the kind of the information, the claims and the relevance to them."

Things to Know About…

Newsweek is making generative AI a fixture in its newsroom (Andrew Deck - NiemanLab) - H/t to David Lowe for sending this my way. Newsweek is leaning harder into AI than most, though they are not requiring reporters to use gAI tools (yet?).

Netflix True Crime Producer Responds to AI Allegations in "What Jennifer Did" Documentary (Victor Tangerman - Futurism) - I'm flagging this one as a story to watch. Something is definitely off here, and while I don't think any of us thinks Netflix hold factual accuracy as it's North Star. As Emanuel Maiberg reported in 404 Media ($), the filmmakers were staking a claim as thought leaders on the ethics of using AI in documentaries. My question is did they know, or was this a top down decision from Netflix.

The AI Index Report: Measuring Trends in AI (Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI) - when Stanford releases its annual report, there's always a lot of buzz. But go into this one expecting a macro view of where AI, writ large, is at right now.

Adobe rolls out new features at MAX London (Andy Stout - RedShark News) - Another week, another set of announcements from Adobe. Where as the last one had a heavy focus on Premiere, this one is a bit more focused on Photoshop.
—And as Rachel Metz and Brody Ford report in Bloomberg, Adobe’s ‘Ethical’ Firefly AI Was Trained on Midjourney Images ($). Oops.

How AI Is Wreaking Havoc on the Fanbases of Taylor Swift, Drake, and Other Pop Stars (Andrew Chow - Time) - All this attention that fans and journalists are paying to AI deepfakes in music is a boon for media literacy. Skepticism, when kept in healthy check, creates consumers savvy with how AI can influence media and society.

Spotting the deepfakes in this year of elections: how AI detection tools work and where they fail (Shirin Anlen & Raquel Vázquez Llorente - Reuters Institute) - Worth noting.

The rise of the chief AI officer (Emma Jacobs - Financial Times) - I've been asked recently about the wisdom of CAIO positions. Personally, not a fan. Like Chief Metaverse Officers before them, I think the title is an over-reaction to the moment. While I do think that it helps to have someone on staff encouraging others to experiment and stay current with the latest news, and I do understand the optics of showing that one’s organization is proactively addressing AI, that individual responsible for that doesn't need to be C-suite. If you are weighing this possibility at your organization, the FT has some helpful reporting on what others in the industry think.

Quantum computing: a new frontier for the broadcast and media industry (Matt Gregory - RedShark News) - Don't let the headline fool you. This is ultimately a story about cyber security. Quantum computing is just the bogey-man. But if you were wondering what could be next in the hype machine, this is a contender.

And finally…

First 'AI beauty pageant' showcases the creepiest side of new tech (Joe Foley - Creative Bloq) - While this was always inevitable, that doesn't make it any less regrettable.

Have a creative, productive week!