AI in journalism

Artificial Intelligence is not the future; it is the present. It is already a part of the modern newsroom, assisting journalists in researching information, transcribing interviews, translating material, and processing huge quantities of data. Meanwhile, AI is posing fresh challenges to journalism, particularly with the creation of realistic yet fake photos, videos, and information.

It is not just that AI should or should not be used in journalism. It's about how the news media can use it responsibly and preserve accuracy, transparency, and public trust.

How AI Is Being Adopted

The Reuters Institute's Generative AI and News Report 2025 surveyed people in six countries – Argentina, Denmark, France, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The findings are not indicative of the Pakistan audience, as Pakistan was not included in the sample drawn for the survey, but are indicative of the general trend across the globe. According to the report, generative AI is becoming a daily routine with many users turning to it to find information. It is still not common to be using it specifically to get news, indicating that audiences still value news organisations for reporting even in the age of AI.

Newspaper offices try new things as well. The Associated Press allows journalists to utilize AI for initial research, summarizing documents, transcriptions, translations, headlines, and summaries of stories in its July 2026 standards. Journalists, however, check and correct the output of generative AI before it is published, the AP reports. Moreover, the AP says that generative AI is not an alternative for reporting, sourcing, editorial decision or verification. AP's ethics guidelines remain unchanged, prohibiting the use of generative AI to generate, edit or enhance photos for news content.

AI's speed of risk: the importance of verification.

Another quality that makes AI useful to journalists who need to sieve through numerous documents to locate any meaningful information or summarize the information is the speed at which it processes the information.

But speedy information doesn't necessarily equal good information.

AI algorithms can generate erroneous claims, misinterpret the context, or provide misleading information in a very convincing manner. Therefore, an AI-generated answer can not be considered a credible source by itself. Therefore, proper policies should be designed to limit the functioning of AI in the journalistic process and mandate human supervision.

The Dawn Case, Policy Isn't Enough?

Sometimes there is also an issue even in those newsrooms where an AI policy has been adopted by the news organization.

According to the Dawn AI policy, there is going to be human supervision; full automation of any job with the use of AI will not happen, and AI-generated content will undergo human scrutiny. However, in November 2025, Dawn published a business report that was edited with the help of AI, despite the fact that this was contrary to the AI policy. Artefact text of AI was provided in the business report. Dawn has taken down the material from the digital copy, admitted the breach, and stated that the issue is under investigation.

This case shows that having a policy for AI usage is not enough; its ensured enforcement and human oversight must be functional before publishing the material.

The rise of Artificial Intelligence and its role in combating misinformation.

The dissemination of misinformation has resulted from the emergence of AI in journalism. The danger of AI-generated misinformation also poses a challenge for Pakistan. The Centre for Excellence in Journalism at IBA Karachi, Pakistan, on iVerify Pakistan, studied more than 1000 false or misleading claims from December 2023 to November 2025.

The convenience of creating misinformation is not the only thing that AI has done; it is now increasingly being used to identify it. Automated tools will help the fact-checkers to spot dubious claims and actively sift through huge volumes of online information.

Nonetheless, studies conducted at Reuters Institute have shown that there are limitations to automated fact-checking. Context, language and judgment are not easy to spot via automated systems. The human fact checkers, then, keep on doing their job, particularly when the claim calls for further investigation.

This is the Deepfake Problem: How to verify an image or video?

With an increasing number of AI-generated videos and images, visual verification is now more important than ever.

Soch Fact Check, for example, analysed images of a journalist named Benazir Shah, who is based in Pakistan, that were seen in the viral media, which were manipulated and likely completely AI-generated.

Soch Fact Check further fact-checked videos that allegedly showed footage from a reporter on the scene of the conflict in Pakistan, which turned out to be AI-generated videos created by Sora, OpenAI. The examples illustrate the need for journalists to go beyond just looking at what an image or video depicts at its surface level. Reverse-image search, source investigation, metadata analysis, key frame analysis, and other tools are becoming more and more critical.

Ensuring Public Trust through Human Accountability

Now that AI has made its advent in the domain of Journalism, it is necessary that news organizations incorporate AI in a responsible way. In the interest of trust in the media, there are issues of accuracy, transparency, and accountability. The Reuters Institute has demonstrated that using AI to assist journalists is more comforting than AI producing news stories on its own.

This distinction is important because despite AI's potential to accelerate journalism, it cannot be held responsible for the news story that it produces.

Conclusion

AI can enhance the efficiency of journalism, but AI also makes it imperative for journalists to verify everything like never before. With the advent of AI in news reporting, journalists will need to polish their fact-checking skills and avoid relying on the technology.

In the future, as AI plays a more prominent role in journalism, the role of human judgment and responsibility will be crucial in ensuring the accurate, transparent, and trustworthy nature of news.