Journalism after AI |
RECENTLY, I was invited to speak at a conference on artificial intelligence, where a familiar and increasingly urgent question resurfaced: as AI becomes extraordinarily efficient at sourcing, processing, and delivering information, will journalists eventually become irrelevant?
At first glance, the idea feels compelling.
If machines can scrape information across multiple feeds in real time, summarise parliamentary proceedings, monitor political developments, crunch data, and respond to user queries in conversational language, why would end users still need traditional journalism outlets, or even digital platforms as intermediaries for news? The argument implies a future where individuals bypass traditional journalism outlets entirely and receive information directly from intelligent systems in a conversational, real-time format.
Those who make this argument often point to changing audience behaviour, especially among younger users. Consumers are steadily turning away from conventional news platforms and gravitating toward faster, more personal, and more direct sources of information.
And to be fair, the trend is clear.
The latest Reuters Institute Digital News Report shows a consistent decline in trust, viewership, and platform dependence on mainstream news outlets. Users, particularly young people, increasingly prefer to consume information from influencers, content creators, and niche commentators rather than from professional journalists. Their relationship with news is personal, interactive, emotional, and algorithmically curated.
Thus, many in the industry look at this shift and assume that........