Artificial Intelligence and the Indian Newsrooms

The first wave of Artificial Intelligence (AI) has started creating ripples in the newsroom — in chatbots, automated reporting systems and machine learning techniques which are sifting through massive data sets to write initial news reports. For those who still believe that AI and automation will not hit jobs in the media industry, just consider the kind of investments that media houses are now making in AI for the newsroom. Clearly, the next five to ten years would be decisive. Google has provided British news agency Press Association $805,000 to build software that will gather, automate and write nearly 30,000 local stories a month. Dubbed as “Radar” (Reporters& Data &Robots), the software will “automate local reporting with large public databases from government agencies or local law enforcement”. South Korea’s Yonhap news agency has introduced an automated reporting system “Soccerbot” to produce news on football games. Associated Press and Thomson Reuters are using machine learning algorithms to write stories and The New York Times plans to automate its comment moderation. So whose jobs are at stake as AI-powered software becomes common in the newsroom?