The Growing Impact of AI in News Production: Insights from The New York Times' First Director

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The future is now.

The New York Times announced on Tuesday the appointment of Zach Seward, a founding editor at Quartz, as the editorial director of artificial intelligence initiatives. In his new position, Seward will be responsible for developing a plan to leverage AI in enhancing the newspaper's product without compromising its journalistic integrity. According to Executive Editor Joe Kahn and Deputy Managing Editor Sam Dolnick, Seward's initial focus will be to establish guidelines for the use of generative AI in collaboration with newsroom leadership. They emphasized that the extensive editorial work would continue to be led by professional journalists.

It will be intriguing to reconsider the latter half of that statement in the years to come. Will all of The NYTs journalism "always" be crafted and edited by human beings in 10, 20, 50 years? I'm not entirely convinced. And I'm not certain anyone can definitively say one way or another. OpenAI's GPT-4 can already construct sentences more effectively than most humans can write—and much more rapidly. In just a few years, this emerging technology will have progressed and made significant strides. It's challenging to envision how, at some point, it will be economically feasible to employ humans to compose stories that a robot can do more quickly and proficiently. (Of course, much of journalism will still necessitate human reporters and editors.)

announced on Tuesday the appointment of a new editorial director of artificial intelligence initiatives, with Zach Seward, founding editor of Quartz, taking on the pioneering role. Seward will be responsible for developing a strategy to leverage the capabilities of A.I. to enhance the newspaper's offerings, without compromising the quality of its journalism.

The introduction of Sewards role signals the significant and transformative impact that A.I. will have on the production and delivery of news to audiences. It is an acknowledgement that in order to remain competitive, organizations must incorporate rapidly advancing technology into their DNA. The main challenge facing editorial leaders is how to effectively utilize this exciting yet risky technology. Some newsrooms have experimented with A.I. to create entire news stories, but this has led to embarrassing moments and errors. CNET, Gannett, Sports Illustrated, and Gizmodo are among the organizations that have encountered difficulties with this technology.

The NYT is taking a different approach than other newsrooms, such as relying on human journalists to produce the news while using A.I. as a helpful tool. For example, A.I. can be used to generate smart headlines. Jonah Peretti, the boss of BuzzFeed, believes that A.I. can empower humans to be better storytellers and create innovative products.

Seward's role will be to identify useful applications for A.I. within The NYTs newsroom. Kahn and Dolnick announced his appointment, stating that he will "build a small team" and "experiment with generative A.I. tools and prototype ideas." The specific ideas are still unknown, although Kahn and Dolnick mentioned the possibility of The NYT incorporating generative A.I. tools into their publishing tools and digital products.

With technology maturing at a breakneck pace and applying pressure to the struggling news industry, it's safe to say that Seward will have plenty of work cut out for him as he takes on this task. For the sake of the news business, let's hope that leaders like Seward can pioneer a path forward in which journalists can collaborate with A.I. instead of watching their already dwindling number of jobs in their profession erased by it.