AI - The unknown territory

I want to start by saying that I am far from an expert on the topic of Artificial Intelligence.  In fact quite the opposite, I am barely past the novice stage of treating Chat GPT like it’s just another form of Google search. 

By LISA CHAPPELL, TPA President 2025-26

While AI is practically a stranger to me, I am ready to tiptoe into this unknown world. I am not afraid of change or new things and I do love a challenge. So I’m not sure why I am slow to dive in to this new fascinating idea of having my own personal assistant that is claimed to be much smarter than I am. However, I am smart enough to know not to trust the information AI may spew at me as 100% factual.    

I just read a column by Richard Cairns, the editor of The Daily Star in Oneonta, New York. He details a story of a man that decided to do an experiment after reading about the health dangers of too much salt. After consulting Chat GPT he decided to replace his table salt with a substance called Sodium Bromide. The result was a rare syndrome called bromide toxicity in which he was experiencing increased paranoia along with auditory and visual hallucinations. That’s a hard way to learn the lesson that you can’t believe everything you read. Or in his case, what he was told from an AI bot. But he’s not alone and we surely will continue to see many more scenarios similar to or even many with much worse outcomes than his.

Maybe my hesitation to use AI is because one, I don’t trust the information and two, I am not sure how I feel about using it in the world of journalism. 

Can we use it in the newsroom – if so, how do we use it? Is it ethical to use at all in journalism even if just to gather data, dictate meetings or create an outline? How about photos and art? Can we alter a photo for our magazines but not the newspaper?  What are the rules and where are the lines drawn between right and wrong? How muddy are those lines?  I don’t have the answers, but I do know that we must adhere to our journalism ethics no matter what the situation or the tools at our disposal.  

On the other hand, using it to grow revenue . . . now that excites me. We can use it in our advertising departments to create marketing tools, gather information on potential advertisers (and their competitors) and even to create impressive media kits. That is where we can move ahead of the other marketers competing with us for local revenue. This could also be a whole new way to find creative ways to grow our subscriber base. We can even learn what it takes to attract Gen Z, Gen Alpha or this brand new group of Gen Beta.   

It seems the rest of the world is getting ahead in business by leaning on this new tool. If we are not using it to get ahead in business, marketing, growing revenue and growing readers now, then we will certainly be left behind. What are we waiting for?

It’s no secret that the newspaper industry is not known for staying ahead of the curve with technology. We are still largely trying to find how we fit in to this digital and social media world. We struggle to connect with a younger audience and now we have another layer of complication with AI. 

I have this nagging feeling that while we try to create the new rules on using AI in journalism that our industry will once again be behind the demands of our tech-savvy youth. We cannot afford to stay behind the curve any longer. It is time to come together as an industry and figure out what is acceptable and ethical for our AI future in journalism. We do not have the luxury of time, we must act now. Our future very well may depend on it.