Six Essential AI Tools for Modern Journalists
Artificial intelligence has become a critical tool for journalists in the newsroom. Such is the momentum of the AI movement that the generative AI market is estimated to reach USD 109.37 billion by 2030.
Artificial intelligence in journalism has many applications. AI tools empower journalists to:
Analyze mountains worth of information in a fraction of the time.
Transform the way news is reported, written, and consumed.
Fact-check, translate, and distribute news.
Automate repetitive tasks and free up time to focus on more meaningful work.
Access accurate, real-time data on breaking news media stories.
Generate engaging content that resonates with readers.
At its core, AI is enabling journalists to work faster, smarter, and better. In this guide, we will learn about six indispensable AI tools that can be every journalist's trusted sidekick. Let's dive in.
Table of Contents
Benefits of Artificial Intelligence in Journalism
AI tools are making a significant impact on journalism, revolutionizing the way news publishers produce content and the way readers consume content. Here's how it helps journalists to deliver more trustworthy, engaging stories to the audience:
Benefit #1: Personalization
By leveraging machine learning algorithms, AI can understand readers' interests, browsing history, and engagement patterns to deliver tailored news updates.
Readers can stay updated on relevant content easily without sifting through irrelevant articles. This personalized approach enhances the user experience, increases engagement, and helps journalists build a loyal readership.
Benefit #2: Fact-Checking
In the era of misinformation and "fake news," fact-checking has become essential to journalism. AI algorithms and data analysis can enable journalists to:
Track down and isolate false or misleading information.
Detect inconsistencies, biased language, or inaccuracies in the text.
Verify claims and access precise information to maintain credibility and set high standards for reporting.
Benefit #3: Automated Reporting
Journalists can input structured data or insights, and AI algorithms can generate content and human-like text without human intervention.
Using natural language processing, AI helps:
Produce articles that are timely, informative, and free of bias.
Automate reporting, ultimately saving time, reducing errors, and increasing newsroom efficiency.
Streamline the news production process and enable journalists to focus on more investigative or analytical tasks.
Benefit #4: Language Translation
Journalism often involves covering stories from around the world, making language translation crucial.
AI tools equipped with machine translation capabilities can assist journalists in:
Overcoming language barriers by automatically translating articles, interviews, social media posts, interviews, or reports from one language to another.
Accessing and understanding localized information instantly from various sources.
Fostering cross-cultural communication, promoting diverse perspectives, and expanding the reach of journalism.
Benefit #5: Speech Recognition
AI-powered speech recognition tools use natural language generation, greatly benefiting journalists, particularly in interviews and transcription.
Powerful AI algorithms can:
Record interviews, speeches, or press conferences and transcribe them quickly and accurately.
Reduce transcription time and help journalists focus on analysis, writing, and storytelling instead.
The end result? Journalists can save a lot of time and effort that would otherwise be spent on transcribing content manually.
Six Best AI Tools Journalists Should Watch Out For
1. Murf.AI
Ever thought of the potential of audio articles for your news media company? Imagine if your audience could listen to the trending news stories and articles instead of browsing through endless lines of content.
This is where Murf's voice over technology can help journalists:
Select from 100% natural-sounding AI voices to make professional voiceovers for news content.
Create audio news stories for a more global audience, thanks to a library of 120+ AI voices across 20+ languages, including English, Spanish, and Portuguese.
Access studio-quality voiceovers at a fraction of the cost.
Add realistic images, video content, and presentations to the voiceover and sync them together without the need for a third-party tool.
Fine tune voiceovers with customization features like 'Pitch,' 'Pause,' and 'Pronunciation.'
2. Pinpoint
A part of Google's Journalist Studio, Pinpoint is a research tool where professional journalists can:
Upload 2,00,000 documents, including images, emails, hand-written notes, and audio files for specific words or phrases, locations, organizations, and people.
Use speech to text technology to search for text in text-based files such as Microsoft Office documents, Google docs, plain text documents, emails, and so on, as well as search for text within images.
Transcribe audio files across multiple languages.
Upload and transcribe up to two hours-long audio files into searchable text files.
Pinpoint supports eight languages for audio transcription.
3. Connexun
Known as "The Ultimate AI News Engine," this tool empowers journalists to:
Source real-time multilingual headlines, articles, and dynamic summaries from thousands of open web sources.
Leverage intelligent algorithms and news-centric features such as news topic ranking, extraction-based summarization, and more to filter news for different types of users.
Track news in real time across 20,000 highly trusted sources across the globe and pick the most important stories first.
Access automatically aggregated news from news API.
Access extractive short summaries of news in various languages.
4. JECT.AI
JECT.AI provides an AI-powered News Archive offering that enables journalists to easily discover news content while generating unique story ideas using JECT.AI's creativity engine.
Other interesting features of the tool include:
Advanced NLP techniques such as Entity Recognition and Sentiment Analysis to structure news archive content.
Advanced search algorithms to quickly and accurately locate specific news articles within the archive.
Sentiment analysis to gauge the mood and tone of the news articles and help users quickly filter for positive or negative sentiment.
Ability to explore different angles and perspectives on a given topic or event.
Suggestions for related articles, topics, and themes to help users discover new content and generate fresh ideas.
Pricing: Get in touch with the team
5. Vetted
Vetted is one of the most popular AI-powered tools used by journalists from established giants such as The Washington Post, Bloomberg, The Economist, and more.
Here are some of its standout journalist-friendly features:
Search for specific experts for news stories.
Send secure messages to experts directly via email.
Find sources using useful features such as the sources' years of experience, areas of expertise, and more.
Access Vetted's list of verified sources.
6. Narrativa
Narrativa is a natural language generation platform that is trusted by the likes of The Wall Street Journal. This tool helps to automate news content.
Journalists can leverage the following functionalities to improve their journalistic standards:
AI for Automatic Generation generates long-tail content, headlines, and subject lines
Narrativa NLP generates multiple variations of calls to action, headlines, and customized content recommendations to increase conversion for news companies.
Narrativa Knowledge Graph performs rapid analysis and creates narratives around complex domains.
Narrativa Insights uses pre-built functions to analyze data in real-time and identify insights.
Narrativa Query analyzes data sets to retrieve relevant data and analyzes it using advanced statistics and clustering algorithms.
AI in Journalism: Top Challenges And How to Address Them
Despite the many benefits of AI-powered tools for journalists, AI journalism is not one without challenges.
These include (but are not limited to):
1. Bias in AI Tools
AI algorithms are only as good as the data (think: historical records, articles, user-generated content, and more) used to train them. If the training data is biased or contains discriminatory information, these AI-powered tools can perpetuate and amplify those biases. This can lead to skewed reporting or the reinforcement of stereotypes.
Note that bias can occur in various forms, including gender, racial, political, or socioeconomic.
Addressing bias in AI tools requires:
Careful data selection.
Diverse and representative training data.
Ongoing monitoring and evaluation.
Involvement of journalists and subject matter experts who can assess and correct any biases that may arise.
The learning: Since all data has some form of bias, AI should not be seen as a silver bullet that can identify and eradicate all prejudices.
2. Lack of Human Oversight
AI journalism often lacks proper human oversight, which can be problematic. Here's why:
AI algorithms may struggle with complex contextual understanding, nuanced analysis, and ethical considerations.
The tool may not understand the subtleties of language and tone, which require human judgment and expertise.
Relying solely on AI tools without human oversight can lead to errors, misinformation, and the spread of false narratives.
The learning: Journalists must continue to verify information, provide context, and make editorial decisions that the tools cannot take over, at least not yet.
3. Reliance on Automated Tools
While AI tools can be valuable aids, there is a risk of overreliance on automated processes in journalism. The temptation to automate various tasks, such as content generation, data analysis, or even news writing, is too big to ignore. If left unchecked, it can lead to a reduction in human involvement. This can potentially compromise the quality and depth of journalistic work.
Plus, AI cannot take over creative aspects of journalism, such as:
Identifying newsworthy topics,
Deciding on the right angle of a story
Opinion driven articles
The learning: Journalistic integrity, critical thinking, investigative skills, and the ability to ask probing questions are vital elements that the tools may struggle to replicate fully. Relying too heavily on automated tools can undermine the unique value that human journalists bring to the field.
4. Lack of Transparency
AI-generated content can be difficult to understand and explain to readers. This can make it hard for journalists to be transparent about how they are using these tools. In fact, journalists and even the public at large may not have insights into:
How AI algorithms prioritize the information.
The weight these tools assign to different factors.
The potential biases they may exhibit.
This can result in skepticism about the credibility and objectivity of AI-driven journalism.
The learning: It is essential for AI tool developers and news organizations to prioritize transparency by:
Providing explanations of how algorithms work
Disclosing the data sources used
Allowing independent audits or third-party evaluations
By fostering transparency, AI tools can gain greater acceptance and enable informed journalistic practices.
It's Time to Ride the AI Journalism Wave
AI tools have the potential to revolutionize journalism. Given that journalists face significant time constraints, never-ending deadlines, and a heightened need for accuracy, AI tools enable them to work faster and with more efficiency. Plus, these tools can enhance research, streamline content creation, and personalize audience engagement.
Despite the potential benefits of AI, ensuring the reliability of AI-generated content and dealing with the ethical implications of AI in journalism are top concerns.
The need of the hour is to address these challenges head-on and establish best practices for using AI in journalism. With the advancements in AI technology, the future of AI journalism looks promising.
If implemented mindfully, AI tools and human beings can work together to produce high-quality, unbiased, and accurate journalism.
FAQs
How is artificial intelligence used in journalism?
AI is used in journalism in various ways, such as:
Generating automated content (think: news articles, summaries, and reports)
Engaging in data analysis and identifying patterns, trends, and insights
Transcribing interviews, translating articles, summarising texts, and extracting key information
Fact-checking and verifying information against reliable sources
What kind of AI tools does a journalist need?
Journalists can benefit from different types of AI-driven natural language processing tools such as automated news writing, sentiment analysis, content discovery, chatbots and voice assistants, and automated transcription and translation.
What are the benefits of AI in journalism?
The benefits of AI in journalism include:
Improved efficiency
Enhanced accuracy
Personalized content
Increased engagement
Better data analysis
