As AI continues to carve out a place in publishing, the best journalists are asking themselves how AI tools can help newsroom processes and improve their work, all while listening intently to the public about their readiness and ultimate preferences.
Unfortunately, it might not be the best writers who are making headlines (or using LMMs to workshop headlines and story ideas, as it were). A recent academic study published in Science Advances wanted to look at the creative boosts that generative AI might provide, and as NPR said during its exploration of the results, there’s a “plot twist.”
Nearly 300 writers were tasked with fleshing out an eight-sentence story which would be judged on its novelty, usefulness, and several emotional characteristics by a group of evaluators. Where the ideas for the story came from would split the writers into the three test groups:
- a group with no access to (and given no mention of) generative AI
- a group given the option to work from a three-sentence starting point created by genAI
- a group given the option to work from one of five such starting points created by genAI.
“We find that access to generative AI ideas causes stories to be evaluated as more creative, better written, and more enjoyable, especially among less creative writers,” authors Anil R. Doshi and Oliver P. Hauser wrote, saying 88.4% who had access to genAI called upon it.
But — enter plot twist — that individual creative boost paid a toll on overall group creativity.
“Generative AI–enabled stories are more similar to each other than stories by humans alone,” the authors say. “These results point to an increase in individual creativity at the risk of losing collective novelty.”
(Source: Science Advances)
How this translates to a newsroom of AI-reliant journalists is a bit of an apples-oranges comparison, but as MediaPost’s Ray Schultz says, the idea of bad AI-powered writers faring better than they otherwise would have without AI is “hardly comforting.”
“It’s one thing if amateur writers use AI to post things in social media,” he says. “It’s another if hedge funds that own newspapers, say, hire them because they’re cheaper than newsroom professionals who learned their craft the hard way and can write without crutches.”
The argument, as it so often does, then boils down to how AI as a tool is used by writers and journalists. Because in their case, the results alone can’t tell the whole story.
“In the end, Newitz says, writing is about humans trying to talk to humans,” NPR’s Geoff Brumfiel said. “It isn’t really for the machines. It’s for us.”
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