UCLA

This study assesses the impact of generative artificial intelligence (AI) on journalism in terms of news production and consumption. It advances existing research in journalism theory by examining how the rapidly advancing and contemporary field of generative artificial intelligence is being integrated into newsrooms. The study begins by reviewing relevant literature surrounding artificial intelligence and journalism, before introducing the theoretical considerations and approaches deemed best suited to approach the three research questions of the study:

RQ1: How do individuals involved in automated news production describe their experiences?RQ2: What are the evaluative criteria used by readers in their perception of automated news content? RQ3: How do news readers in the United States perceive automated news content and human-written news content relative to the descriptors derived from RQ2?

Through a mixed methods approach of a) semi-structured interviews with journalists and product developers describing their experiences producing content with AI and b) survey experiments evaluating and comparing perceptions of news articles generated using AI (ChatGPT), this study underscores the idea that AI-generated media is a fundamentally distinct entity from human-generated media. Thus, this entity must be reckoned with using a novel set of theoretical assumptions if we are to properly ascertain its social and cultural impacts. The study concludes by considering the future of creativity in an AI-generated world and the salience of alienation as a potential social consequence of the increased role of generative AI across industries. Ultimately, this study provides a foundation for offering a more comprehensive understanding of the multifaceted nature of news production and consumption.