AI systems are both promising and unsettling for quality journalism. On the one hand, they open up completely new possibilities – for investigating large amounts of data, utilizing knowledge resources and creating even more efficient workflows. At the same time, they jeopardize trust in journalistic content. If AI systems write just as eloquently as humans and generate multimedia content whose AI origins are barely recognizable – how will media companies be able to sustain against such competition?

The talk outlines the current status of the integration of AI systems in media organizations and uses specific use cases to demonstrate the challenges to be overcome. One focus lies on the perception of media contents in whose creation artificial intelligence was involved, and research results on meaningful labeling approaches. Finally, future scenarios show the transformation that journalism still needs to undergo in order to survive in an AI-mediated information ecosystem and to continue to serve a well-informed society.

From September 2021, Christina Elmer is Professor for Digital Journalism and Data Journalism at TU Dortmund University. Previously she was deputy head of editorial development at Der Spiegel, where she had co-managed the relaunch of the digital platform and established the data journalism department. During a research sabbatical in 2021 as the first Journalist in Residence at the Cyber Valley research network, she investigated the explainability of AI methods. Before she joined Spiegel Online as a science editor in 2013, Elmer worked at Stern magazine’s investigative unit. Her journalistic career began in 2007 at the German press agency dpa, where she was part of a team which set up Germany’s first department for data journalism and computer assisted reporting. Elmer studied Journalism and Biology. She is a shareholder of the human rights organization AlgorithWatch and a board member of Netzwerk Recherche, Germany’s largest association supporting investigative reporters.

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HITS Kolloquium Christina Elmer: Synthetic Truthfulness? Learning Systems as a Challenge for Communication and a Transformative Force for Journalism