‘Our journalism will continue with humans, not AI’: British business daily's editor

NEW DELHI: In the era of ChatGPT, the Financial Times is determined to continue its journalism with humans and not with generative artificial intelligence models, the British business daily's editor said on Saturday.

"Our journalism will continue to be reported, written, and edited by humans who are the best in their fields," Roula Khalaf wrote in a Letter from the Editor.

Khalaf said that generative AI models in the newsroom can help journalists and editors in the analysis and discovery of stories, increase productivity, and liberate time to focus on generating and reporting original content.

However, the currently available AI models are "ultimately a prediction engine, and they are learning from the past", she said.

They can also "fabricate facts—referred to as "hallucinations"—and make up references and links".

Further, upon manipulation, these "can produce entirely false images and articles and also replicate existing societal perspectives, including historic biases".

In the era of rapid technological innovation, when "misinformation can be generated and spread rapidly and trust in the media in general has declined", Khalaf said she believes that the more than 130-year-old newspaper has a greater responsibility to be transparent and accurately present facts.

"That is why FT journalism in the new AI age will continue to be reported and written by humans, who are the best in their fields and who are dedicated to reporting on and analysing the world as it is, accurately and fairly," Khalaf said.

At the same time, she said the FT newsroom will embrace AI by delegating a team "that can experiment responsibly with AI tools "to help journalists with mining data, analysing text and images, and translating.

While the newspaper will not publish photorealistic images generated by AI, it will explore the use of AI-augmented visuals (infographics, diagrams, and photos).

The readers will also be made aware of the AI-generated images, Khalaf said.

"The team will also consider, always with human oversight, generative AI's summarising abilities. All newsroom experimentation will be recorded in an internal register, including, to the extent possible, the use of third-party providers who may be using the tool," she noted.

Khalaf said that the exciting new frontiers of every new technology must be explored responsibly and "must be accompanied by caution over the risk of misinformation and the corruption of the truth". (IANS)

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