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False and Apparently "AI" Derived News Story about KNX's FM changing Format in LA.

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Simply adding the word "news" to the name of a site doesn't necessarily mean it is a "news" site.

The long, soap-boxy version:

Unfortunately, this is a well documented problem which has been thoroughly researched by reputable institutions (whose research is still ongoing), especially in the so-called "news deserts," wherein numerous sites with "news" in their names pop up to fill in the void left by various traditional and local newspapers and do little more than aggregate articles from sources known for actively producing false news and misinformation, including false reporting from various posts on Facebook and other social media, deepfaked photos, antidemocratic, authoritarian rhetoric and propaganda from foreign actors such as China and Russia, etc. And now AI can be used to amplify all this and make it even worse, because it can make fake news which is more convincing and real looking than anything humans can make, at least in theory. In practice, it's not quite there yet, but it's getting closer and closer to becoming a reality by the day.

The short version: don't trust sites with "news" in their names without first checking if they're legitimate.

c
 
secondchoice said:
I guess it is Ok to not worry about the truth in news.
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There are a couple 'conservative' cable news channels that have "News" in their name, but have hosts/pundits who tell lies all the time. So I guess it depends what someone wants to believe is actually considered news. Many Internet sites take that same grey area to absolute extremes.
 
Kelly A said:
You can post boogieman alerts all day. The fact remains that much of this has little to do with AI that's all up in the news today. News Bots have been around for years. Much of the traditional press is just jumping on the AI bandwagon because they don't understand what it is, other than they've heard it makes crap up. Over the years have there been bot-generated stories? Sure, that's what news bots were invented for. Scrape other news sites and social media, then compile it into a story that comes off as salacious. Are news agencies interested in AI because it could save them money over employing reporters to surf the Internet looking for news? Sure, but not if the AI gives them a bad reputation. This assumption that AI is being suddenly released to the new-consuming public is, creating its own narratives. Which, is what news sites want actually.
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News companies (at least in local tv) won’t use AI. There’s too much on the line, let alone legally, to replace reporters with AI. You might see it in smaller tv markets used in some sort of way, but it’s a very bad idea. As I said before, this is one thing, television/journalism outlets needs to just step away from.
 
MarioMania said:
How will we trust AI with fast food in 20 years or sooner
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Fast food chains have already been experimenting with "AI" to take customer orders for a few years now in the same way that banks, public utilities and the like have been using it to answer their customer support lines and at least collect information and answer simple and basic questions. For repetitive tasks like customers saying "I'll have a #1 combo with a Coke" or "Give me a double cheeseburger and fries" or in the case of customer support "What's my outstanding balance" or "I need a replacement card", voice recognition software can easily understand and process those with ease without human involvement and have been for a number of years.

In the case of restaurants, "AI" could relatively easily take a pizza order and direct an automation system to select the appropriate sized crust, administer the appropriate toppings, place it on the conveyor that moves it through the oven, and box and label it on the other side. Even a decade ago, I noted that one of the major fast food chains had automated their soft drink dispensers to select the cup, slide it under the dispenser, fill it with the appropriate amount of ice and beverage and place the lid on it - so in some ways various automated systems have existed in that industry for a while. Bring them all together with the ability for VR to take the orders and interract with the customers and we're probably not far off from a fully automated process.
 
Loverofradio said:
News companies (at least in local tv) won’t use AI. There’s too much on the line, let alone legally, to replace reporters with AI. You might see it in smaller tv markets used in some sort of way, but it’s a very bad idea. As I said before, this is one thing, television/journalism outlets needs to just step away from.
Click to expand...
"News companies" (whatever that term could truly define anymore) are less and less important than they were even 20 years ago, because they don't make the money they used to. The LA Times recently laid off 74 workers, a considerable percentage of their workforce (13%). You think someone in control there isn't looking into AI? Local TV probably has a decade and a half of viable life left. Everything TV once covered is now increasingly covered by internet based content. If local TV could figure a way to keep some semblance of quality and do it with less people, they probably would and will, using tech. In fact, broadcast media has used tech to automate a lot of things over the years. And AI is just a slick form of tech.

As for working without journalists in general, that isn't much of an issue to news media because they are a business, and like every other business, they have a bottom line to meet. And in an advertising-supported business model, money's a bit tight, even in news. And TV is still a business just like newspapers, radio, news sites, etc. They're advertising supported, and have bills to pay.

As we've probably all seen, Radio alone has slashed probably more than a quarter of its workforce since 1990, and probably more than a handful of those were folks who worked in news. Why would a news media operation care any more than a radio operation about laying off people? When you don't have the money to pay them, you don't have the money to pay them.

The number of journalists in the US was somewhere between 250K and 300K, nationwide, in the mid 1980s -- during the peak in news worker numbers. Now it's less than 50K. The last number I saw on the BLS site was 46K. An 80% or so decrease from the mid-1980s peak.

So, when the population increased by about 40%, the number of journalists dropped by about 80% during the same time period. See the trend?

Now, as to whether any remaining "news companies" are truly concerned about replacing journalists with AI, I would think that they would be looking into the option, just like every other prominent business is probably looking into it. They may not seriously be considering it right away, but they may have their eye on the tech, as AI is just computer apps, albeit massive, slick ones.

Automation rules the day. That trend is never going to stop. And AI is just the latest form of computer driven automation. And like all computer driven automation, it takes a while to work out the bugs. How long it will take before half of the news one sees on "TV" is AI derived is a good question. 15 years away? 20? Who knows. Bad idea or not, it's the future.
 
Mikey Radio said:
Fast food chains have already been experimenting with "AI" to take customer orders for a few years now in the same way that banks, public utilities and the like have been using it to answer their customer support lines and at least collect information and answer simple and basic questions. For repetitive tasks like customers saying "I'll have a #1 combo with a Coke" or "Give me a double cheeseburger and fries" or in the case of customer support "What's my outstanding balance" or "I need a replacement card", voice recognition software can easily understand and process those with ease without human involvement and have been for a number of years.
Click to expand...
Not always and not easily. I have a couple of family members who speak English with a marked accent and they have lots of trouble with some things like drive through at certain chain fast food restaurants; they simply don't go to them any more.
Mikey Radio said:
In the case of restaurants, "AI" could relatively easily take a pizza order and direct an automation system to select the appropriate sized crust, administer the appropriate toppings, place it on the conveyor that moves it through the oven, and box and label it on the other side.
Click to expand...
If they understand the person to begin with.
Mikey Radio said:
Even a decade ago, I noted that one of the major fast food chains had automated their soft drink dispensers to select the cup, slide it under the dispenser, fill it with the appropriate amount of ice and beverage and place the lid on it - so in some ways various automated systems have existed in that industry for a while. Bring them all together with the ability for VR to take the orders and interract with the customers and we're probably not far off from a fully automated process.
Click to expand...
There will always be issue with both regional accents in English as well as foreign language accents among first generation immigrants. I suspect that many will have issues with AI controlled ordering, and opt for a different brand or chain the next time.
 
Loverofradio said:
News companies (at least in local tv) won’t use AI. There’s too much on the line, let alone legally, to replace reporters with AI. You might see it in smaller tv markets used in some sort of way, but it’s a very bad idea. As I said before, this is one thing, television/journalism outlets needs to just step away from.
Click to expand...

FTVLive, the TV news blog, says Scripps (a company with a strong historic reputation in journalism) is trying AI in some form at its station in Lansing, Michigan, FOX 47. It's for FTVLive Patrons only, but when the story breaks elsewhere, I'll try to post it here.
 
MarioMania said:
How will we trust AI with fast food in 20 years or sooner
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There are different kinds of AI.

The concern here is generative AI...artificial intelligence that can, once programmed to do so, on its own, look around for information, shape it into content and then deliver it to you, either in text or voice form.

What you'll see in fast-food, and as Mikey Radio noted, we're already seeing now, is that you'll give your order to a kiosk, that'll send a message to the kitchen and, if they get humans all the way out of that, an automated system will hold the pickles, hold the lettuce, add extra mayo, whatever.

It won't make the cow.
 
DavidEduardo said:
Not always and not easily. I have a couple of family members who speak English with a marked accent and they have lots of trouble with some things like drive through at certain chain fast food restaurants; they simply don't go to them any more.

If they understand the person to begin with.

There will always be issue with both regional accents in English as well as foreign language accents among first generation immigrants. I suspect that many will have issues with AI controlled ordering, and opt for a different brand or chain the next time.
Click to expand...
And this is where touchscreen order kiosks with multiple language options come in.
 
michael hagerty said:
FTVLive, the TV news blog, says Scripps (a company with a strong historic reputation in journalism) is trying AI in some form at its station in Lansing, Michigan, FOX 47. It's for FTVLive Patrons only, but when the story breaks elsewhere, I'll try to post it here.
Click to expand...
I can certainly see a role for that kind of thing, even in today's tech.

For example: "Take this press release and summarize it in 100 to 150 words" is something today's tech should be able to handle.
 
PTBoardOp94 said:
I can certainly see a role for that kind of thing, even in today's tech.

For example: "Take this press release and summarize it in 100 to 150 words" is something today's tech should be able to handle.
Click to expand...
Yeah, except parroting out press releases (and I know it happens with humans, too) isn't journalism, it's stenography.

Press releases are crafted to tell the story the agency or person putting out the release wants to tell.

My first four news directors would have fired any one of us who wrote up a story from a press release without calling and asking questions of the people who put it out and the people affected by whatever it is the release is promoting.
 
boombox4 said:
"News companies" (whatever that term could truly define anymore) are less and less important than they were even 20 years ago, because they don't make the money they used to. The LA Times recently laid off 74 workers, a considerable percentage of their workforce (13%). You think someone in control there isn't looking into AI? Local TV probably has a decade and a half of viable life left. Everything TV once covered is now increasingly covered by internet based content. If local TV could figure a way to keep some semblance of quality and do it with less people, they probably would and will, using tech. In fact, broadcast media has used tech to automate a lot of things over the years. And AI is just a slick form of tech.

As for working without journalists in general, that isn't much of an issue to news media because they are a business, and like every other business, they have a bottom line to meet. And in an advertising-supported business model, money's a bit tight, even in news. And TV is still a business just like newspapers, radio, news sites, etc. They're advertising supported, and have bills to pay.

As we've probably all seen, Radio alone has slashed probably more than a quarter of its workforce since 1990, and probably more than a handful of those were folks who worked in news. Why would a news media operation care any more than a radio operation about laying off people? When you don't have the money to pay them, you don't have the money to pay them.

The number of journalists in the US was somewhere between 250K and 300K, nationwide, in the mid 1980s -- during the peak in news worker numbers. Now it's less than 50K. The last number I saw on the BLS site was 46K. An 80% or so decrease from the mid-1980s peak.

So, when the population increased by about 40%, the number of journalists dropped by about 80% during the same time period. See the trend?

Now, as to whether any remaining "news companies" are truly concerned about replacing journalists with AI, I would think that they would be looking into the option, just like every other prominent business is probably looking into it. They may not seriously be considering it right away, but they may have their eye on the tech, as AI is just computer apps, albeit massive, slick ones.

Automation rules the day. That trend is never going to stop. And AI is just the latest form of computer driven automation. And like all computer driven automation, it takes a while to work out the bugs. How long it will take before half of the news one sees on "TV" is AI derived is a good question. 15 years away? 20? Who knows. Bad idea or not, it's the future.
Click to expand...
As someone who currently works in media, and with all due respect, you‘re overthinking about this
 
michael hagerty said:
As someone who currently works in media, and has for 52 years, with the last 42 in newsrooms, with all due respect, no he's not.
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I’m sorry, I just can’t see any self-respecting GM or news director signing off of having anything to do with AI into a newsroom. local tv isn’t radio. Stations will rather run lean on staff than to risk any mistakes from AI. The moment my station does this, I’ll send $20 in the mail to you both personally. Plus, I didn’t know there’s a way to see how many journalists there are in the United states
 
vchimpanzee said:
I never go through a drive through. How does anyone get to a wallet while driving?

As for being understood, the automated systems constantly tell me "I didn't get that". Well, then, switch me to a person.
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Chimp,

Please stop writing posts which have nothing to do with the subject of the thread. If you continue doing this, you will be suspended.
 
Loverofradio said:
I’m sorry, I just can’t see any self-respecting GM or news director signing off of having anything to do with AI into a newsroom. local tv isn’t radio. Stations will rather run lean on staff than to risk any mistakes from AI.
Click to expand...

How long have you been in media and how many GMs have you met?

Corporate tells the GM what to do, or the GM is gone and another GM who will do it is there. The paranoia pyramid continues down, with the GM telling the ND what to do, or the ND is gone, and so on.
 
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