People are worried about the media using AI for stories of consequence, but less so for sports and entertainment

Tero Vesalainen / Shutterstock

Amy Ross Arguedas, University of Oxford and Nic Newman, University of Oxford

Advances in artificial intelligence (AI) are disrupting many aspects of modern life, and the news industry is no exception. In a year with a record-breaking number of elections worldwide, there has been considerable soul searching about the potential effect of so-called “deepfakes”, and other synthetic content, on democracies. There have also been further disruptions to the business models and trust underpinning independent journalism.

Most audiences are just starting to form opinions about AI and news, but in this year’s Digital News Report survey, which we produced at the University of Oxford’s Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, we included questions about the subject in 28 markets, backed up with in-depth interviews in the UK, US and Mexico.

Our findings reveal a high level of ambivalence about the use of these technologies. It also offers insights to publishers looking to implement the technologies without further eroding trust in news, which has fallen in many countries in recent years.

It is important to keep in mind that awareness of AI is still relatively low, with around half of our sample (49% globally and 56% in the UK) having read little or nothing about it. However, concerns about the accuracy of information and the potential for misinformation are top of the list when talking to those who are better informed.

Manipulated images and videos, for example around the war in Gaza, are increasingly common on social media and are already causing confusion. As one male participant said: “I have seen many examples before, and they can sometimes be very good. Thankfully, they are still pretty easy to detect but within five years they will be indistinguishable.”

Some participants felt widespread use of generative AI technologies – those that can produce content for users in text, images and video – would probably make identifying misinformation harder, which is especially worrying when it comes to important subjects, such as politics and elections.

Across 47 countries, 59% say they are worried about being able to tell what is real and fake on the internet, up three percentage points on last year. Others took a more optimistic view, noting that these technologies could be used to provide more relevant and useful content.

Use of AI by the news industry

The news industry is turning to AI for two reasons. First, they hope that automating behind-the-scenes processes such as transcription, copy editing and layout will reduce costs. Second, AI technologies could help personalise the content itself, making it more appealing for audiences.

In the last year, we have seen media companies deploying a range of AI solutions, with varying degrees of human oversight, from AI-generated summaries and illustrations to stories written by AI robots and even AI-generated newsreaders.

How do audiences feel about all of this? Across 28 markets, our survey respondents were mostly uncomfortable with the use of AI when content is created mostly by AI with some human oversight. By contrast, there is less discomfort when AI is used to assist (human) journalists, for example in transcribing interviews or summarising materials for research.

Here, respondents are broadly more comfortable than uncomfortable. However, we see country-level differences, possibly linked to cues people are getting from the media. British press coverage of AI, for example, has been characterised as largely negative and sensationalist, while US media narratives are shaped by the leading role of US companies and the opportunities for jobs and growth.

Comfort with AI is also closely related to the importance and seriousness of the subject being discussed. People say they feel less comfortable with AI-generated news on topics such as politics and crime, and more comfortable with sports or entertainment news, subjects where mistakes tend to have less serious consequences.

“Chatbots really shouldn’t be used for more important news like war or politics as the potential misinformation could be the reason someone votes for a candidate over another one,” a 20-year-old man in the UK told us.

Our research also shows that people who tend to trust the news in general are more likely to be comfortable with the uses of AI where humans (journalists) remain in control, compared with those who don’t. This is because those who tend to trust the news also tend to have greater faith in publishers’ ability to responsibly use AI.

Interviews we conducted show a similar pattern at the level of specific news outlets: people who trust specific news organisations, especially those they describe as most reputable, also tend to be more comfortable with them using AI.

On the flipside, audiences who are already sceptical of or cynical about news organisations may view their trust further eroded by the implementation of these technologies.

As one woman from the US put it: “If any news organisation was caught using fake images or videos in any way it should be held accountable and I’d lose trust with them, even if they were being transparent that the content was created with AI.”

Carefully thinking about when disclosure is necessary and how to communicate it, especially in the early stages, when AI is still foreign to many people, will be a crucial element for maintaining trust. This is particularly so when AI is used to create new content that audiences will come into direct contact with. Our interviews tell us this is what audiences are most suspicious of.

Overall, we are still in the early stages of journalists’ usage of AI, but this makes it a time of maximum risk for news organisations. Our data shows audiences are still deeply ambivalent about the use of these technologies, which means publishers need to be extremely cautious about where and how they deploy them.

Wider concerns about synthetic content flooding online platforms mean trusted brands that use the technologies responsibly could be rewarded. But get things wrong and that trust could be easily lost.

Amy Ross Arguedas, Postdoctoral Researcher Fellow, Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, University of Oxford, University of Oxford and Nic Newman, Senior Research Associate, Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, University of Oxford

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Elections: a global ranking rates US weakest among liberal democracies

A disappointing slide for the US after an election blighted by disinformation. Aaron Burson/Unsplash

Toby James, University of East Anglia and Holly Ann Garnett, Royal Military College of Canada

Defending democracy has suddenly become one of the central challenges of our age. The land war in Ukraine is widely considered a front line between autocratic rule and democratic freedom. The United States continues to absorb the meaning of the riot that took place on January 6 2021 in an attempt to overthrow the result of the previous year’s election. Elsewhere, concerns have been raised that the pandemic could have provided cover for governments to postpone elections.

Elections are an essential part of democracy. They enable citizens to hold their governments to account for their actions and bring peaceful transitions in power. Unfortunately, elections often fall short of these ideals. They can be marred by problems such as voter intimidation, low turnout, fake news and the under-representation of women and minority candidates.

Our new research report provides a global assessment of the quality of national elections around the world from 2012-21, based on nearly 500 elections across 170 countries. The US is the lowest ranked liberal democracy in the list. It comes just 15th in the 29 states in the Americas, behind Costa Rica, Brazil, Trinidad & Tobago and others, and 75th overall.

An election in Costa Rica, which ranked well in the list. Ingmar Zahorsky/FLickr, CC BY-NC-SA

Why is the United States so low?

There were claims made by former president Donald Trump of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election. Theses claims were baseless, but they still caused the US elections ranking to fall.

Elections with disputed results score lower on our rankings because a key part of democracy is the peaceful transition of power through accepted results, rather than force and violence. Trump’s comments led to post-election violence as his supporters stormed the Capitol building and sowed doubt about the legitimacy of the outcome amongst much of America.

This illustrates that electoral integrity is not just about designing laws – it is also dependent on candidates and supporters acting responsibly throughout the electoral process.

Perceptions of electoral integrity are measured by experts for each country one month after polls close. Experts are asked to assess the quality of national elections on 11 sub-dimensions: electoral laws; electoral procedures; district boundaries; voter registration; party registration; media coverage; campaign finance; voting process; vote count; results; and electoral authorities. These items sum to an overall Electoral Integrity Index scored from 0 to 100. F. Electoral Integrity Project.

Problems with US elections run much deeper than this one event, however. Our report shows that the way electoral boundaries are drawn up in the US are a main area of concern. There has been a long history of gerrymandering, where political districts are craftily drawn by legislators so that populations that are more likely to vote for them are included in a given constituency – as was recently seen in North Carolina.

Voter registration and the polls is another problem. Some US states have recently implemented laws that make it harder to vote, such as requiring ID, which is raising concern about what effect that will have on turnout. We already know that the costs, time and complexity of completing the ID process, alongside the added difficulties for those with high residential mobility or insecure housing situations, makes it even less likely that under-represented groups will take part in elections.

Nordics on top, concern about Russia

The Nordic countries of Finland, Sweden and Denmark came out on top in our rankings. Finland is commonly described as having a pluralistic media landscape, which helps. It also provides public funding to help political parties and candidates contest elections. A recent report from the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights found a “high level of confidence in all of the aspects of the electoral process”.

Cape Verde has the greatest quality of electoral integrity in Africa. Taiwan, Canada and New Zealand are ranked first for their respective continents.

Electoral integrity in Russia has seen a further decline following the 2021 parliamentary elections. A pre-election report warned of intimidation and violence against journalists, and the media “largely promote policies of the current government”. Only Belarus ranks lower in Europe.

Globally, electoral integrity is lowest in Comoros, the Central African Republic and Syria.

Money matters

How politicians and political parties receive and spend money was found to be the weakest part of the electoral process in general. There are all kinds of threats to the integrity of elections that revolve around campaign money. Where campaign money comes from, for example, could affect a candidate’s ideology or policies on important issues. It is also often the case that the candidate who spends the most money wins – which means unequal opportunities are often part and parcel of an election.

It helps when parties and candidates are required to publish transparent financial accounts. But in an era where “dark money” can be more easily transferred across borders, it can be very hard to trace where donations really come from.

There are also solutions for many of the other problems, such as automatic voter registration, independence for electoral authorities, funding for electoral officials and electoral observation.

Democracy may need to be defended in battle, as we are currently seeing in Ukraine. But it also needs to be defended before it comes to all-out conflict, through discussion, protest, clicktivism and calls for electoral reforms.

Toby James, Professor of Politics and Public Policy, University of East Anglia and Holly Ann Garnett, Assistant Professor of Political Science, Royal Military College of Canada

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.