‘News’ site forces journalists to face future with AI

The future arrived without warning two weeks ago, dragging Nunatsiaq News into the world of artificial intelligence controversy this paper had previously managed to avoid.

A journalist colleague at another organization sent an email, pointing out a new website that posts AI-generated articles about the North, based on news that real organizations had already reported.

We News appears to be a Hong Kong-based website using more than 100 AI-generated “correspondents” whose articles are cobbled together using artificial intelligence instead of traditional reporting. They gather their information from news articles written by real journalists and from official sources such as the RCMP and Government of Nunavut.

It calls its Nunavut correspondent Leah Qammaniq. She comes complete with an Inuit-sounding name, an AI-generated picture of a woman with Inuit features and even an AI-generated back story about being “raised in the North.”

Miriam Lafontaine, a new but very real Nunatsiaq News reporter, wrote a thorough news story about this troubling development. She did it the old-fashioned way by interviewing real people, researching the issue and sitting down in front of a computer to type it out.

Our Inuit readers will decide for themselves whether We News is deceptively fabricating an imaginary Inuk reporter. But to this qalluanaaq journalist, it’s offensive to make up an Inuk correspondent out of thin air to dupe readers.

It’s bad enough that real non-Inuit pretend to be Inuit to get benefits intended for Inuit. But an AI-generated correspondent pretending to be Inuk because it’s somehow more authentic to get AI-generated news from an AI-generated correspondent?

As a journalist, this is an alarming, disappointing — but predictable — development in the intersection of news and artificial intelligence.

For the record, Nunatsiaq News does not use generative AI in its reporting or in its advertising. This is a stand news organizations are increasingly taking.

Experts in the news business were quick and unequivocal in condemning this AI intrusion into the news business.

News Media Canada president Paul Deegan called it “theft” on “an industrial scale.”

Canadian Association of Journalists president Brent Jolly said the manipulation of the public’s right to know by AI “disgusts” him. He warned that the public doesn’t realize what’s happening and more questions aren’t being asked about how to address it.

It’s not just Nunatsiaq News getting ripped off. Our hard-working colleagues — competitors at Nunavut News and CBC — are having their articles harvested by We News. Legitimate journalists must now contend with an AI-fuelled site that uses their own work to compete with them. We News appears to be displaying Google ads, so it’s making money off the backs of real journalists and their employers.

That’s why Nunatsiaq News urges its readers to be aware of where their information comes from and to avoid AI-generated information that steals the work of real journalists. We want readers to get their information from us, but if not, they should at least get it from a real news organization.

The news business is a difficult one. Having to compete for readers and advertisers against an elusive organization that uses AI to repackage our own content is going to make that even harder for real journalism to thrive.

Journalism is about storytelling — a real reporter talking to real people about what happens in their community, building trust with sources, and then sharing the story with readers.

What We News is doing is not journalism, despite the fact that it has created itself in the image of real, trusted news organizations.