Having a ‘human in the loop’ is supposedly what sets professional publishers apart from cowboy operators with their bot farms spewing out unchecked AI-generated content.
To the extent that professional publishers are publishing content that has largely been created by AI, that’s ok, the thinking goes, because we make sure there is a human in the loop.
It’s our comfort blanket, but is the blanket becoming a little threadbare?
For a start, how reliable is that human? As Reuters Institute’s Felix Simon wrote last November, there’s a risk of “journalists defaulting to the AI systems’ judgement or output, simply approving content because it’s easier when they are worn out or under time pressure”.
If more and more AI-created content is being waived through untouched, and as AI models improve, meaning that human interventions reduce still further, how long will publishers continue to fund the not-inexpensive human if they rarely do anything?
With budgets under pressure, publishers and their investors will be tempted to reduce the number of humans in the loop.
This week, the Sunday Telegraph reported that David Montgomery is in talks with investors about a second approach for Reach, a bid says the Telegraph that would slash editorial headcount by 850 and increase the use of “automated content gathering”.
That’s a lot of humans.
Without humans in the loop, what then will be our differentiator? Perhaps, the human will remain in the loop but will be represented less at the front end of the publishing process, at the decision to publish, and more at the back end, in the design and set up of the AI models.
Process design might be the differentiator of the future.
Call me old-fashioned, but I cling to the idea that human written content remains the gold-standard, with AI being used for process optimisation, personalisation, marketing and, at a push, reformating and publishing some press releases.
As FT Strategies’ Joseph Miller wrote in an article: “This human factor is vital to engaging readers. Individual voices offer different perspectives that can differ from the majority, offering a unique narrative that cannot be replicated. AI on the other hand offers an amalgamation of information, drawing the mean from a variety of sources and only voicing the majority view on an issue. The difference can be likened to that of a store-bought cake mix versus a homemade recipe. Both have their respective uses in different contexts but the latter done well is more likely to wow your dinner guests.”
(Finally, on the subject of AI, we're running a special AI feature in the September / October issue of InPublishing magazine, to be followed by a Q&A webinar in November. If you’re a supplier to the industry and would like to take part, there is still time. Please contact my colleague Martin Maynard to find out more.)
You can catch James Evelegh’s regular column in the InPubWeekly newsletter, which you can register to receive here.
