MEAA, News Corp staff concerned with company’s new AI news generator

This would require the AI to train itself on the writing of real News Corp journalists to develop the styles, something the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA) said is an unethical threat to both jobs and quality journalism.

“News Corp is introducing AI programs that threaten to undermine real journalism told by humans, with workers recently being called into mandatory AI training sessions,” the union wrote on LinkedIn.

“Workers must be consulted before their work is used to train AI models and should be properly compensated.”

The MEAA also shared a statement appearing to be from News Corp journalists.

“MEAA members at News Corp are deeply concerned by management’s forced rollout of an Al platform that has the potential to undermine and replace the integral work that human journalists do,” the statement said.

“Union members at News Corp stand up every day for strong, ethical journalism. The stories of our communities are human stories that need to be told, checked and supported by accountable, ethical human beings.

“We are deeply insulted by management’s deal with OpenAI to breach our paywall and provide free comprehensive summaries of our journalism to ChatGPT users without a corresponding change to reporters and newsrooms to hit subscription and pageview targets.”

The statement also requested that News Corp management consult journalists before any new editorial tools are implemented “to ensure the use of AI and its implementation is transparent and will not replace journalism by human journalists”.

However, News Corp has denied that the technology will be used to replace jobs, but instead will empower workplaces.

“As with many companies, News Corp Australia is investigating how AI technologies can enhance our workplaces rather than replace jobs,” a News Corp spokesperson told Weekly Beast.

“Any suggestion to the contrary is false.”

News Corp has a reputation for massive staff cuts in an effort to cut costs. In June last year, it cut 80 jobs in its sales department, before cutting tens of millions in costs after suffering revenue losses from its Meta deal and a slowdown in the advertising market. This involved cutting editorial and middle management positions.

Making things worse is that NewsGPT is not the only AI tool the company is trialling. Another tool will use a journalist’s persona to create fresh story angles or gather unique leads. A third tool called “Story Cutter” will eliminate the need for sub-editors by editing and producing copy.

The company has already embraced AI in a strong way, admitting to producing 3,000 localised articles weekly using generative AI in 2023. News Corp publications also frequently use AI-generated images in their articles.