Skip to main content

The future of journalism? A.I. rewrites news depending on your politics

Today, all of us live in filter bubbles online, in which the news we read is increasingly tailormade for our personal tastes. This is a problem for media companies and readers alike — and it’s one that an intriguing new online news aggregator hopes to help solve.

Called Knowhere, the newly launched website is the work of a media-savvy entrepreneur and some Stanford-trained artificial intelligence experts. It uses machine learning tools to cover the day’s biggest stories by offering left, impartial, and right-leaning versions of each. The components of these stories are aggregated from various online news outlets and then rewritten by an A.I. Each story can reportedly be written in as little as 60 seconds to 15 minutes, depending on the complexity of the piece. Once that process is completed, a human editor then reviews the story, which further trains the news-writing algorithms. The result? Not only a whip-fast news aggregation site, but one which could help break the filter-bubble problem.

Related Videos

“I was inspired by my father who was an investigative journalist and correspondent for the BBC throughout my childhood,” co-founder, CEO and editor-in-chief Nathaniel Barling told Digital Trends. “Each night he would bring home three papers, The Guardian, The Times, and The Telegraph. He’d ask me to read all three of them so that I could gain a balanced perspective on the day’s news.”

Knowhere calls up the bias of each article it writes with a large “left,” “right” or “impartial” label. By featuring all three versions, Barling said he hopes the website will reduce the effect of people being trapped in their own online echo chambers — whichever side of the political spectrum those happen to be on.  (Or, if you’re cynical, try to pander to all possible audiences.)

“Knowhere is most useful for reaching one simple, but extremely hard to achieve, goal: finding the truth,” he said. “We present our readers with the facts of each story, and the narratives being built around them, so that they can develop their own informed opinions. This is particularly useful for news where there’s a high degree of controversy and partisan sentiment. In this case, you will often see different publications covering the same news with a very strong ‘house-spin’, without actually saying anything ‘untrue.’ There also tends to be a greater misrepresentation of facts on controversial news items, which our technology is designed to identify and omit. Our journalism will appeal to readers who want to know the full and accurate story, free of bias.”

Will it work? We will have to wait and see. Judging from the fact that Knowhere has already scored $1.8 million in funding, however, at least a few people believe that this is the future of journalism.

Editors' Recommendations

Analog A.I.? It sounds crazy, but it might be the future
brain with computer text scrolling artificial intelligence

Forget digital. The future of A.I. is … analog? At least, that’s the assertion of Mythic, an A.I. chip company that, in its own words, is taking “a leap forward in performance in power” by going back in time. Sort of.

Before ENIAC, the world’s first room-sized programmable, electronic, general-purpose digital computer, buzzed to life in 1945, arguably all computers were analog -- and had been for as long as computers have been around.

Read more
How 5G is changing journalism
best series finales the newsroom finale

There's little doubt that 5G is starting to touch every area of our lives -- from online classrooms to 5G-powered bots supplying medication to remote citizens. It’s no surprise then that 5G is also changing the way our newsrooms work. 
Once widely available, 5G tools and the faster speeds they deliver will help journalists in at least three ways, professor John Pavlik of Rutgers University. First, he says, “5G can enable journalists working in the field to report more effectively from their digital devices, particularly with regard to high-bandwidth news gathering, such as photogrammetry, and other immersive applications for augmented reality and virtual reality (e.g., volumetric video capture), as well as high-resolution video from mobile devices.”
Second, 5G can enable news organizations to operate effectively without relying on a central, physical newsroom by supporting high-speed internet file sharing. Finally, 5G can help improve newsrooms by supporting better engagement with the public.
The best example of how 5G has made journalism more effective can be seen with the latest collaboration between The New York Times and Verizon. In 2019, the two companies came together to build a 5G Journalism Lab. Tools born out of this collaboration include environmental photogrammetry, Beam, and Eclipse.
Environmental photogrammetry
“Environmental photogrammetry involves taking thousands of still photographs and stitching them together as one large 3D model, giving readers the ability to immersively navigate the space as if they were actually there,” explains Sebastian Tomich, senior vice president and global head of advertising and marketing solutions for The New York Times.
This technology was first used in a 2020 story that toured the Los Angeles mansion where gamer conglomerate FaZe Clan lived and worked. “An article that employs environmental photogrammetry uses as much data as streaming an hourlong television show,” Marc Lavallee, head of research and development for the Times, said in a press release. “Making this kind of reading experience seamless for our readers requires cutting-edge networks like 5G.”
Beam and Eclipse 

Talking about their first proprietary photography app, Beam, Tomich said it allows Times journalists working in the field to capture and automatically upload high-resolution images to the newsroom with nothing but their smartphone and camera. 
Building upon the advances of Beam, the Eclipse app leverages Verizon 5G to expand video journalism. Eclipse can use 5G to transmit professional video files that meet The Times’s quality standards at a speed that competes with uploads of mobile phone videos, which have file sizes roughly 14 times smaller, Tomich said. It allows video journalists to get material into their editors’ hands in close to real time, rather than hours later.
“This "always on" connection facilitated by Beam and Eclipse enables deeper coordination between the newsroom and photo and video journalists in the field,” he said. “With the ability to review footage in near real time, editors can now request additional photos or videos while the journalist is still on the scene.”
Real-life applications
These tools developed by the 5G lab aren’t just ideas inside four walls. The team has already started implementing them to improve the speed and quality of journalism. 
For instance, when the team went to cover the 2020 Oscars red carpet arrivals, Verizon set up a 5G network at the event. Using Beam, a Times photographer roamed the red carpet freely, without interruption or regard for file transfer limits. “He ended up sending eight times more photos than the previous year’s photographer, with an average upload time of 2.1 seconds,” Tomich said. “With Beam, shooting IS filing.”
However, creating powerful tools isn’t always enough for effective real-world practices. Factors like awareness, availability, and access to resources play a huge role in shaping journalism. As newsrooms and 5G providers are waking up to the transformational power of 5G-powered, Pavlik suggests three ideas to better capitalize on the 5G tools available on the market.
He advises newsrooms to: 

Read more
Amazon goes after two firms allegedly selling fake reviews
Amazon logo on the headquarters building.

With so many fake reviews plaguing online shopping sites these days, confirming the true quality of a product is as challenging as ever.

Amazon knows all too well that fake reviews dent the integrity of its site, with a growing number of shoppers unable to trust the opinions left by others about products they're considering buying.

Read more