Fazly Rabbi Khan
Imagine, you are reading a news article of a well-known newspaper with breakfast tea, and the article is written by an algorithm, after knowing that you must be surprised. In the era of Artificial Intelligence, such incidents are happening all the time. This type of journalism is called “Automated Journalism.” According to a report by the New York Times, the Bloomberg publishes one-third of total news by Automated Journalism. The Washington Post published almost 300 news of the Rio Olympics in 2016, by virtual Robot journalists. The co-founder of Narrative Science, an AI-based news agency, Christian Hammond says, “within next 15 years, almost 90 percent of news content will be covered by Robot Journalists”
Now it’s easy to predict the future scenario of the Media Industry in the AI-era. AI is changing the Media industry. The number of press media has increased exponentially with the advancement of the human race. The number of regular newspapers is almost 18,000 or more all over the world. This number will be almost uncountable if we consider the blogs and frog-like news portals. The number of satellite, local, and internet TVs in electronic media is also about 26,000.
Nowadays, online news portals are challenging print media. Many old and popular media like The Independent, Christian Science Monitor, or Newsweek closed or compressed their print edition because of huge printing expenses. And today’s people are more comfortable with online media rather than print editions. YouTube has become the alternative of traditional TV channels, in every minute more than 300 hours of videos are uploaded on YouTube and more than 30 million people watch those videos. By 2025, the major portion of the audience will be YouTube based. Various TV series based on the Internet is challenging traditional TV programs. Netflix is now a headache for the world's big media houses. In Bangladesh Prothom Alo, Daily Star, Ittefaq, BBC Bangla has been streaming their programs on Facebook and YouTube to sync with the modern era of AI-based journalism. Even the corporates are giving priority to online Ads rather than conventional TV and print media Ads because of greater audience reach.
Leading media, such as the AP, Reuters, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and The Guardian have already joined the march for change by hiring virtual robot journalists. At present, only sports, economy, trade, weather, and earthquake warnings can be published by AI, but it’s clear that these robot journalists will also make news headlines in the coming days. Today, AI anchors are presenting TV news in china, the experts say the AI anchor will conduct talk shows and interviews like programs in the near future.
By 2030 almost 800 million jobs will be replaced by robots and AI programs, and the media industry won’t be excluded from this change. The media industry owners will be interested to replace human journalists because of the fastness, accuracy, and low cost of AI journalists. It is assumed that by 2050 most of the bestseller books will be written by AI. The revolutionary AI has already challenged human journalists, but many experts say no matter how much develops the AI but the necessity of human journalists won’t be eliminated.
In many developed countries, the media industry has been touched by AI, but the heat of this wave hasn’t reached Bangladesh yet. But it’s very clear; in the future, our media industry will also be influenced by AI. The question is how much we will be able to adopt this change? But now it's time to prepare us for the era of AI-driven journalism.
Fazly Rabbi Khan is an
Engineer and Author.
