Italian Paper Welcomes ChatGPT To The Newsroom
The Evolving Media Landscape And The AI Wave
For over two decades print media has weathered assaults from digital technologies. Craigslist diminished paid classifieds free online content devalued subscriptions and smartphones with social media fractured attention spans making long form reading a challenge. Now generative AI enters the arena and many publishers eager to avoid past mistakes are rushing to adopt this new technology.
Several major publications including The Atlantic have formed partnerships with OpenAI and other AI firms. This has led to various experiments such as using software for translating articles drafting headlines and creating summaries or even full articles and quizzes.
Il Foglio Pioneers AI Integration in Journalism
However perhaps no publication has ventured as far as the Italian newspaper Il Foglio. Starting in late March for one month Il Foglio printed a daily four page insert composed of AI written articles and headlines. Claudio Cerasa Il Foglio’s top editor tasked ChatGPT Pro with writing on diverse topics like Italian politics J D Vance and AI itself. Two human reviewers checked the AI’s output for errors sometimes leaving minor mistakes to show AI’s fallibility and other times requesting rewrites. This insert titled Il Foglio AI quickly gained international media attention. Cerasa explained Its impossible to hide AI. And you have to understand that its like the wind you have to manage it.
The paper which distributes around 29000 copies daily alongside its online readership now plans to permanently integrate AI written content. This will include a weekly AI section and occasional AI generated articles in the main paper always clearly labeled. Cerasa has already utilized AI to create fictional debates such as an imagined dialogue between conservative and progressive cardinals on selecting a new pope. Other examples include a review of columnist Beppe Severgnini’s book with an AI written retort from Severgnini and even the chatbot’s advice on falling for an AI which wisely counseled Do not fall in love with me. ChatGPT also conducted an interview with Cerasa himself.
Transparency Versus Misuse The AI Dilemma
Il Foglio’s approach to AI is notably transparent clearly distinguishing between human and AI generated content. This contrasts sharply with other publications that offer limited or no disclosure about their AI usage with some even mixing AI and human writing without informing readers. Illustrating the risks of such practices shortly after Cerasa’s initial conversation with the original article's author at least two major US regional papers published a lengthy Heat Index section filled with errors and fabrications. A freelancer involved admitted to using ChatGPT which led to invented book titles and non existent expert sources highlighting the pitfalls of using AI to cut corners. You can read more about how AI generated problematic content for these newspapers.
A Conversation with Claudio Cerasa AI as a Colleague
Given the obvious pitfalls I wanted to understand Cerasa’s experiment better. He described his experience with AI in journalism as unsettling yet optimistic. While acknowledging AI’s flaws and proneness to fabrications which his staff has frequently caught and sometimes been criticized for publishing Cerasa emphasized that when used correctly AI writes well sometimes more naturally than human staff.
However there are limits. Anyone who tries to use artificial intelligence to replace human intelligence ends up failing Cerasa stated when asked about the Heat Index disaster. AI is meant to integrate not replace. He believes the technology can benefit journalism only if its treated like a new colleague one that needs to be looked after.
The core issue perhaps is using AI for substitution rather than augmentation. In journalism anyone who thinks AI is a way to save money is getting it wrong Cerasa asserted. Yet economic anxiety pervades the field. The introduction of a robot colleague could imply fewer human jobs. What lessons can the media glean from Il Foglio’s approach?
Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Matteo Wong: In your first experiment with AI you hid AI written articles in your paper for a month and asked readers if they could detect them. How did that go What did you learn
Claudio Cerasa: A year ago for one month every day we put in our newspaper an article written with AI and we asked our readers to guess which article was AI generated offering the prize of a one year subscription and a bottle of champagne.
The experiment helped us create better prompts for the AI to write an article and helped us humans write better articles as well. Sometimes an article written by people was seen as an article written by AI for instance when an article is written with numbered points first second third. So we changed something in how we write too.
Wong: Did anybody win
Cerasa: Yes we offered a lot of subscriptions and champagne. More than that we realized we needed to speak about AI not just in our newspaper but all over the world. We created this thing that is important not only because it is journalism with AI but because it combines the oldest way to do information the newspaper and the newest artificial intelligence.
Wong: How did your experience of using ChatGPT change when you moved from that original experiment to a daily imprint entirely written with AI
Cerasa: The biggest thing that has changed is our prompt. At the beginning my prompt was very long because I had to explain a lot of things You have to write an article with this style with this number of words with these ideas. Now after a lot of use of ChatGPT it knows better what I want to do.
When you start to use in a transparent way artificial intelligence you have a personal assistant a new person that works in the newspaper. Its like having another brain. Its a new way to do journalism.
Harnessing AI Strengths and Recognizing Limitations
Wong: What are the tasks and topics you’ve found that ChatGPT is good at and for which you’d want to use it And conversely where are the areas where it falls short
Cerasa: In general it is good at three things research summarizing long documents and in some cases writing.
I’m sure in the future and maybe in the present many editors will try to think of ways AI can erase journalists. That could be possible because if you are not a journalist with enough creativity enough reporting enough ideas maybe you are worse than a machine. But in that case the problem is not the machine.
The technology can also recall and synthesize far more information than a human can. The first article we put in the normal newspaper written with AI was about the discovery of a key ingredient for life on a distant planet. We asked the AI to write a piece on great authors of the past and how they imagined the day scientists would make such a discovery. A normal person would not be able to remember all these things.
Wong: And what can’t the AI do
Cerasa: AI cannot find the news it cannot develop sources or interview the prime minister. AI also doesn’t have interesting ideas about the world that’s where natural intelligence comes in. AI is not able to draw connections in the same way as intelligent human journalists. I don’t think an AI would be able to come up with and fully produce a newspaper generated by AI.
The Future of Journalism and the AI Talent Pipeline
Wong: You mentioned before that there may be some articles or tasks at a newspaper that AI can already write or perform better than humans but if so the problem is an insufficiently skilled person. Don’t you think young journalists have to build up those skills over time I started at The Atlantic as an assistant editor not a writer and my primary job was fact checking. Doesn’t AI threaten the talent pipeline and thus the media ecosystem more broadly
Cerasa: It’s a bit terrifying because we’ve come to understand how many creative things AI can do. For our children to use AI to write something in school to do their homework is really terrifying. But AI isn’t going away you have to educate people to use it in the correct way and without hiding it.
In our newspaper there is no fear about AI because our newspaper is very particular and written in a special way. We know in a snobby way that our skills are unique so we are not scared. But I’m sure that a lot of newspapers could be scared because normal articles written about the things that happened the day before with the agency news that kind of article and also that kind of journalism might be the past.
