Artificial Intelligence is rising like dawn, bringing clarity to some and uncertainty to others. In the last two years AI usage has expanded across workplaces, schools, and, most significantly, public information platforms. It’s typically defined as the use of computer systems designed to analyze large amounts of information and utilize algorithms to perform tasks usually carried out with human intelligence.

In journalism today AI is seen as a useful tool. Many journalists see it as a rapid way to curate content, analyze research, and draft articles. However, with the uprise of AI in journalism comes the downfall of content credibility.
What helped journalists at first ended up haunting them. AI began to cause the spread of false information around public media. This is due to the AI systems that generate content based on existing data that may be giving writers outdated information, biases, or simple misinformation.

Technology does not truly comprehend truth or context in the way the human mind can. AI predicts what sounds correct rather than verifying facts. It produces information so quickly that, in the process, it causes false information to spread widely before it is fact-checked.

When news organizations utilize AI without strong human oversight they risk publishing misinformation, which can have severe consequences including lawsuits, loss of credibility, biases, and even stereotypes being made.

“I don’t think I’d be a big fan of student journalists using AI to write their stories…I mean journalism still has a code of ethics,” said Jared Friebel, who previously taught journalism but currently teaches Civics courses. “Professional journalists would lose a job over something like that.”

He stresses that while technology can be a useful tool, journalists must remain accountable for the information they publish.

Friebel cited a lawsuit a few years ago against Sports Illustrated, a sports magazine, that underwent a huge scandal regarding the use of AI in their stories.

“Sports Illustrated got slammed for that…it’s one of the reasons it is less relevant now than it once was,” Friebel said.

Friebel highlights the dangers of AI use in journalism, specifically news writing, it can cause legal consequences and affect the long term authority and credibility of a certain source.

Studies from the Pew Research Center highlighted this very topic. The use of artificial intelligence in journalism is able to generate organized, data-rich topics quickly such as weather updates and sports statistics. This allows journalists to prioritize more complex work and topics resulting in a quicker routine and a more successful flow of production.

They also uncovered that AI algorithms could potentially analyze audiences behavior towards specific news content and can personalize it to their liking. This can have a major impact on the future of journalism as it would extremely increase engagement within the department.

Although the benefits of AI sound convincing and harmless, the Center also highlighted the challenges that come with it. There are possibilities for misinformation to be implemented in writing due to AI, and it can be produced in a highly convincing way.

This makes it hard for the audience to distinguish between what’s real and what’s not threatening journalism’s authenticity as a whole.

The possibility of job displacement is also causing a major scare among those working in journalism. Research indicates that entry level positions are being threatened by AI, resulting in the remaining roles needing higher skill sets and training to be fulfilled, encouraging more technology to be used as assistance.

Students in journalism preparing for a future in the course have been advised to stray away from the use of AI to prevent encouraging this growth, and the spread of false news as possible. Even those interested in entering the field of journalism as their careers are already feeling the impact of AI.

Hanna Rifai, sophomore, said she hopes to pursue journalism as her career after high school. Her interests sparked at a young age when she would read magazines and newspapers lying around her house, fascinated by its content.

“I found it really interesting how there were so many different perspectives on the same topic, and I’ve always loved writing more than other subjects,” Rifai said.

She has become more and more aware of how often artificial intelligence appears in news and media.

“I do think I see AI writing more than real human writing now, and it’s upsetting…,” Rifai said. As the contents of AI increases in the stories she’s reading, her trust in the information decreases significantly.

Rifai said she strongly believes the most threatening danger of AI’s influence on journalism is the loss of knowledge of the outside world and uneducated audience.

“Journalists are the main source of information for people,” Rifai said. “If they’re reading information that isn’t true, journalists will decline and people will start spreading false information without even realizing it.”

This ties to how Rifai noticed teachers emphasizing source credibility in class, and overall warning students about unreliable websites and sources that could potentially connect to AI generated content.
But how can AI be used in journalism without entirely replacing human writing?

Sydney Shuster, senior, was left pondering this question. She worked with artificial intelligence during an internship where it was used to analyze and organize data. Shuster explained that the AI tools she used helped sort large data sets, identifying patterns and creating graphs that were easy to interpret by researchers.

“It wasn’t writing articles or creating information on its own,” Shuster said. “Instead, the technology required constant human oversight to make sure the data was being understood and ready to use.”

In journalism, this kind of data analysis is necessary in certain cases, but only if the writer is responsible for verifying the accuracy of the information used and presented.

She also emphasized how AI does not understand credibility or accuracy which are two of the most important values in journalism. AI pulls from any existing data, whether or not it has been proven as inaccurate, making it easily susceptible to reflect major biases in this world.

“AI doesn’t know what’s true or not, it only knows what it’s been told,” Shuster said.

Overall, Schuster said she believes this becomes dangerous when AI is depended on for news articles as inaccurate sources tend to be used and presented to the public.

As AI grows in many parts of the world, in journalism there is a line it can cross where it goes from being a helpful tool to a harmful one. While AI has been proven to organize data and assist with routine tasks it is detrimental to the core values that make up journalism reliability: truth, accountability, ethics, and context. AI is a risk of spreading misinformation with the absence of human oversight, if AI were to be the reason behind false news the public’s trust in the media will only weaken.

Voices from educators, students, and future journalists all side with the same conclusion, that AI should remain a tool and not a storyteller. Future journalists must maintain their role as fact-checkers and critical thinkers using their human judgement over automation. By being cautious of AI’s output, journalism can thrive with reliable trusted information while preserving public trust in an increasingly digital world.