Artificial Intelligence Shapes the News

The two founders of Instagram, Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, plan to make life easier for those interested in the news with an app they created called Artifact, a personalized news feed that uses artificial intelligence techniques to produce customized news reports. Expect more of this type of effort as investors lick their chops at the promise of artificial intelligence innovations like the ChatGPT that commands so much attention and interest in circles that spread far beyond journalism. 

I’ve been using Artifact ever since I heard about it during a lengthy interview with the two entrepreneurs on Ben Thompson’s Stratechery podcast a couple of weeks ago. Basically, Artifact first asks you questions about news and subjects that you find of interest. Then it begins sending you a news feed from many sources tailored to your stated interests. In theory, the news feed will improve over time as the technology records what articles or videos you prefer and adjusts to the individual’s selections and tastes.

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While I admire the ambition and goals of Systrom and Krieger, who created Instagram and then sold it to Facebook for $1 billion in 2012, they, like many in Silicon Valley, have plunged into the news business failing to appreciate many cherished journalistic practices that could complicate their lofty aspirations.  

One of the great values journalists bring to the news is editing or curating in the lingo of the online world. Seasoned professionals in newsrooms around the world spend their days doing something that I don’t have the time to do: Reading all the news and using journalistic judgment to shape what’s important and what’s not.

When I get up in the morning and read the news, the editor gives me some perspective and context on the news value of individual stories. He or she gives me some sense of order to the news and saves me time. Editing, it seems to me, is a prime target of systems like ChatGPT, which aims to replace humans with the tools of artificial intelligence. So instead of an editor, I get an algorithm. Will Artifact be as good as a human? I’ll see. 

So far, it’s not. What I currently get from my Artifact feed is far from the human touch: It’s like a shotgun blast of news, some important stories, some trivial, some news, some opinion, all coming at me like pellets from the barrel of a twelve-gauge. It lacks the perspective and context shaped by the hands of a skilled editor. It lacks news judgment, a very human trait. 

To be fair, Artifact promises me that my experience will improve as time passes thanks to machine learning — an artificial intelligence technique in which a computer armed with networks of data will hone my reading and viewing habits and make the shotgun resemble a high-powered rifle. I think that’s probably true. So far, though, I’ve dodged the bullet. 

Another problem I find is the failure to appreciate the challenges the craft of journalism now faces — provocations created in no small part by Silicon Valley. Big plans dominate the plans of Systrom and Krieger, and they intend to rely on journalists, the human version and not a bot. 

“I think people always want to know what’s going on in the world around them, and the way they learn about that is through various mediums,” Systrom says. “It can be through the printed newspaper, it can be through a magazine, it can be through a radio show, it can be through a podcast, it can be through a video on TikTok, it can be on cable television. You name it, they can learn about the world around them.” 

Systrom says he’s discovered something counterintuitive to the digital world he inhabits. “There’s this secret that everyone thinks that no one likes to read. Yes, video is growing in terms of time spent, but it turns out that people really like to read. Now do they read the whole article? Not always. Do they skim it? Probably. But they do enjoy written content.” His insight gives him a different perspective from some of his colleagues who helped cripple those who publish the news.

“In no shape or form do we wake up in the morning saying, ‘Our goal is to replace publishers,’” Systrom says, “because it turns out that reported content from the front lines with interesting, thoughtful, unique analysis that you can’t get anywhere else is not simply something you can parrot out with a (computer) model. So, I think a lot of people are going to have job security for a very long time in the publishing industry.” 

That sounds like good news to the ears of journalists like me, but it’s not exactly what publishers have experienced over the last twenty years — thanks mainly to the damage inflicted on publisher’s business model by Systrom’s and Krieger’s Silicon Valley colleagues. The lucrative advertising revenue that once filled the pages of newspaper publishers now fits more comfortably and economically in the confines of social media companies like Google and Meta’s Facebook.

Report for America, a national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms, says the number of American journalists declined from 55,700 in 1990 to 23,300 in 2019, or a decline of nearly 60 percent, the latest figures available say. That’s not exactly job security. If one includes broadcast journalists and those who work at weekly newspapers, the decline is just as steep. The declines also dwarf new jobs created by promising online for-profit and non-profit news organizations. Indeed, local papers, which provide news that is the mother’s milk of democracy, are now closing at the rate of two a week, says Northwestern University’s School of Journalism, Media and Integrated Marketing Communications. 

So, if Systrom’s and Krieger’s vision is spot on, a fair question is this: Where will they find content from all of the journalists they intend to rely on for good, solid reporting? 

A handful of news organizations, such as the New York Times and Washington Post, still field cadres of seasoned journalists who cover the wars, politics and public business that news aggregators like Artifact rely upon. Although the Times and the Post are faring well, they have their problems. The Post recently enacted some layoffs, which sounds like the plight faced by many other publishers struggling to keep their heads above water. Systrom and Krieger may be able to populate their site with national and international news. But what about news from local and regional news organizations, the traditional training grounds for up-and-coming journalists. They’ve been decimated by the loss of advertising revenue that once bolstered their bottom lines. 

The ripple effect of the crisis faced by local publishers spreads beyond the local newspaper. Broadcast and other online news outlets no longer can rely as heavily upon newspapers to do the heavy lifting — covering bread and butter news beats such as city hall, police stations and state legislatures, all important local news beats starved of resources by struggling publishers. In Artifact’s new world, who’s going to cover the courthouse? 

Systrom and Krieger have an aspirational answer to the problems. Artifact and other companies, aided by the techniques of artificial intelligence, will help create audiences so that writers of all stripes can become their own publishers. In other words, you’re on your own. 

“I think a lot of the value of great reporting or great content online comes from the personality or the perspective. It’s the writers that I keep coming back to over and over and over again on a topic and sure, maybe ChatGPT is going to be able to mimic the ideas well enough that it’s hard to tease them apart,” Krieger says, “but in general, there are other sources of analysis or voices or perspectives that (are) just very hard to replace and has that human aspect to it. The more we can find those voices — and those voices could be writing for a major publication, they could have their own blog, they could be starting their own blog now — and I think that is the human element that I get most excited about.” 

At least they’ve come to appreciate the value of good journalism, a good sign. And I hope they are right. So far, though, Artifact is more about aspirations than results. I’ll keep using it to see if things get better. But I’ll also be asking myself a question I often ask of these ventures: “Where’s the substance?”

—James O’Shea

James O’Shea is a longtime Chicago author and journalist who now lives in North Carolina. He is the author of several books and is the former editor of the Los Angeles Times and managing editor of the Chicago Tribune. Follow Jim’s Five W’s Substack here.