Bild plans to replace editorial jobs with AI
So apparently Germany's biggest newspaper, Bild, is planning to replace a bunch of editorial jobs with artificial intelligence. And as part of a cost-cutting program, they're also restructuring their regional newspaper biz, which could lead to a ton of job losses. According to an email from the company's owner, Axel Springer SE, the roles of editors, print production staff, subeditors, proofreaders and photo editors will no longer exist as they currently do. Yikes. The CEO of the company, Mathias D\u00f6pfner, has said in the past that he believes AI tools like ChatGPT could make journalistic content better than ever before, or even replace it altogether. He reckons that soon, AI will be better at aggregating information than human journalists, and the only publishers who will survive will be the ones who create the best original content, like investigative journalism and original commentary. Bild hasn't given any specific numbers for how many jobs will be lost to AI, but it's not looking good. And apparently, this isn't the first time a news publisher has looked into AI - BuzzFeed has talked about using it to enhance content and online quizzes, and the Daily Mirror and Daily Express in the UK are also exploring its use. While AI tools can generate some pretty complex text from simple prompts, from articles to poems to works of fiction, those responses aren't always accurate or even truthful. For instance, Men's Journal and tech site Cnet have been using AI to generate articles that are later corrected by human editors. Die Aktuelle, a German weekly mag, even sacked its editor and had to apologise to Michael Schumacher's family after they ran an interview with the F1 legend that was entirely generated by AI. Oops. But back to Bild - the company says it's going to try and avoid forced redundancies where possible, but it's looking to cut its editorial payroll by about 200 jobs. Yikes. The German Journalists' Association has called Springer's plans antisocial towards employees and extremely stupid economically. Sounds about right to me. It's tough to say where all of this is going to lead, but it's clear that AI is changing the media landscape in a big way. And while it might be able to help make some aspects of journalism more efficient, it's hard to imagine a world where human journalists are entirely replaced by machines. At least, I hope not. But who knows, maybe one day robots will be running the show. Only time will tell. That's about it, see ya.