Poynter: When was the last time AI made you laugh? Scenes from the 2025 Summit on AI, Ethics and Journalism. “Newsrooms on a local and national level are experimenting with AI, using tools inside the newsroom to better report and display stories, and tools externally to better connect with audiences. But audiences, new research shows, are still skeptical about generative AI in news. This […]

https://rbfirehose.com/2025/04/13/poynter-when-was-the-last-time-ai-made-you-laugh-scenes-from-the-2025-summit-on-ai-ethics-and-journalism/

Online Journalism Blog: Google Sheets has a new AI function — how does it perform on classification tasks?. “AI has been built into Google Sheets for some time now in the Clippy-like form of Gemini in Sheets. But Google Sheets’s AI function is different. Available to a limited number of users for now, it allows you to incorporate AI prompts directly into a formula rather than having to […]

https://rbfirehose.com/2025/04/13/online-journalism-blog-google-sheets-has-a-new-ai-function-how-does-it-perform-on-classification-tasks/

PressGazette: Virtual reality: The widely-quoted media experts who are not what they seem. “Since the launch of ChatGPT in 2022, anyone can generate comment, on any subject, in an instant. It is a technology that appears to have fuelled a rise in expert commentators who have appeared widely in national newspapers but who are either not real, not what they seem to be or at the very least have […]

https://rbfirehose.com/2025/04/08/virtual-reality-the-widely-quoted-media-experts-who-are-not-what-they-seem-pressgazette/

BBC: ‘Google AI presented my April Fools’ story as real news’. “Every year, journalist Ben Black publishes a playful fake story on his community news site Cwmbran Life for April Fools’ Day…. In 2020, Mr Black published a fake story claiming Cwmbran had been recognised by Guinness World Records for having the most roundabouts per square kilometre. Despite altering the wording of his article […]

https://rbfirehose.com/2025/04/05/bbc-google-ai-presented-my-april-fools-story-as-real-news/

NiemanLab: AI search engines fail to produce accurate citations in over 60% of tests, according to new Tow Center study. “Last summer, I reported that ChatGPT frequently hallucinated fake URLs to news sites, even to articles from OpenAI’s own publishing partners. Research has continued to show that these citation issues are not limited to ChatGPT, but are in fact chronic across the AI […]

https://rbfirehose.com/2025/03/11/niemanlab-ai-search-engines-fail-to-produce-accurate-citations-in-over-60-of-tests-according-to-new-tow-center-study/

The Guardian: LA Times reportedly removes new AI tool from story after it downplayed KKK. “The Los Angeles Times has reportedly removed its new artificial intelligence (AI) tool from one of its articles, just a day after launching the feature. The publication unveiled a new AI-driven feature called ‘Insights’ this week, designed to accompany articles that express a particular viewpoint or are […]

https://rbfirehose.com/2025/03/07/the-guardian-la-times-reportedly-removes-new-ai-tool-from-story-after-it-downplayed-kkk/

Columbia Journalism Review: We Compared Eight AI Search Engines. They’re All Bad at Citing News.. “Overall, the chatbots often failed to retrieve the correct articles. Collectively, they provided incorrect answers to more than 60 percent of queries. Across different platforms, the level of inaccuracy varied, with Perplexity answering 37 percent of the queries incorrectly, while Grok 3 had a […]

https://rbfirehose.com/2025/03/06/columbia-journalism-review-we-compared-eight-ai-search-engines-theyre-all-bad-at-citing-news/

Futurism: Allstate Is Demanding We Delete These Quotes by Its Exec About How It’s Using AI to Write Insurance Emails . “We were struck this week when the Wall Street Journal reported that Allstate, a major insurance company, had largely handed over the task of writing claims emails over to an AI system. The WSJ’s source wasn’t remotely controversial; it was Allstate’s own chief information […]

https://rbfirehose.com/2025/02/17/futurism-allstate-is-demanding-we-delete-these-quotes-by-its-exec-about-how-its-using-ai-to-write-insurance-emails/

Engadget: The Guardian is the latest news organization to partner with OpenAI. “The Guardian Media Group, owner of The Guardian and The Observer newspapers, is partnering with OpenAI. The deal will see reporting from The Guardian appear as a news source within ChatGPT, alongside article extracts and short summaries. In return, OpenAI will provide the Guardian Media Group with access to […]

https://rbfirehose.com/2025/02/16/engadget-the-guardian-is-the-latest-news-organization-to-partner-with-openai/

BBC: AI chatbots unable to accurately summarise news, BBC finds. “Four major artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots are inaccurately summarising news stories, according to research carried out by the BBC. The BBC gave OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Microsoft’s Copilot, Google’s Gemini and Perplexity AI content from the BBC website then asked them questions about the news.”

https://rbfirehose.com/2025/02/12/bbc-ai-chatbots-unable-to-accurately-summarise-news-bbc-finds/

My Press Alert: Introducing MyPressAlert Beta: Real-Time News Monitoring with AI. “Today marks the beta launch of MyPressAlert – a revolutionary platform that monitors news broadcasts in real time and matches your topics of interest to spoken words with unprecedented speed and accuracy.”

https://rbfirehose.com/2025/01/16/introducing-mypressalert-beta-real-time-news-monitoring-with-ai-my-press-alert/

University of North Carolina: How building the AI-powered local news audience assistant bot helped us help local journalists – and learn about AI . “For local newsrooms, 2024 is the year of AI. At the Center for Innovation and Sustainability in Local Media, which exists to help the local news industry, we built the Local News Audience Assistant to help journalists find exactly what they […]

https://rbfirehose.com/2024/12/08/university-of-north-carolina-how-building-the-ai-powered-local-news-audience-assistant-bot-helped-us-help-local-journalists-and-learn-about-ai/