AI and Journalism Need Each Other

In the Associated Press newsroom a decade ago, I witnessed the birth of a new era: AI penning news. Before artificial intelligence rose to its current prominence, it wasn’t tech luminaries but journalists at AP who floated the audacious idea of machines taking up editorial roles. As I watched lines of code spin stories, a thought nagged at me: Weren’t stories meant to be earned, not generated?

Fast-forward to today, and this once-controversial shift has proved revolutionary for AP and many other organizations. Tackling two monumental challenges in journalism—covering an ever-expanding breadth of news and overcoming the limits of human capacity—AI has reshaped the industry. AI enabled AP to broaden its quarterly financial reporting from 400 companies to 4,000. This had ripple effects: Stanford researchers found that such comprehensive coverage spurred trading activity and heightened liquidity for the newly covered firms, bolstering the market’s overall vitality.