Eighth International Conference on Communication & Media Studies

Abstract

The world of journalism has been evolving for decades, with new technologies and innovations changing how news is reported and consumed. One of the most exciting new developments in the field is using artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning to enhance the speed and accuracy of news reporting. And at the forefront of this revolution is Chat GPT, a language model developed by OpenAI. In this context, the research question is: Does ChatGPT change journalism? Journalists should know ChatGPT’s major flaw: it cannot be trusted. ChatGPT was trained by inputting the entirety of the internet, and it responds to prompts by making predictions on the most likely answer to queries. Using this model sometimes generates a solution that’s not factually correct. We have three preliminary considerations. First, we see ChatGPT and tools used negatively to undermine trust in information environments, pushing people away from public discourse to increasingly homogenous communities. Second, we see a range of fascinating on-the-ground experiments and research emerging around how we as a society adapt to image and text generation tools like ChatGPT and Dall-E to use these incredible advances in ways that genuinely benefit the community while limiting harms, particularly to the most vulnerable. Third, will see growing attention at the federal level to build meaningful guardrails around the development and deployment of these and other AI systems.