Should media replace journalists and artists with AI

Illustration: TBS

Media platforms committed to serious journalism only work when they have credibility. Without it, a media house is reduced to being just another content creator.

On social media, content creators can run whatever they want. They can push a conspiracy theory or post frivolous material and still bag an audience. They can choose to be credible sources, but they are not bound by accountability. In the grey world of social media, freedom comes without responsibility. That's why a man in France or the US can spread lies about Bangladesh or incite violence, and the government here can do almost nothing. There are millions of such examples.

Conventional media houses, however, are legally registered organisations bound by the laws of the nation where they operate. If they run malicious content, they risk lawsuits. If they publish fake or misleading news, they lose respect—and eventually their audience.

Now, in the era of Artificial Intelligence (AI), conventional media in Bangladesh faces an unforeseen philosophical question: how should we use AI? The answer is far from settled. We already see AI-generated content slipping into respected newspapers. Some reports have even "mistakenly" printed AI prompts at the bottom of articles.

Recently, a popular newspaper published a satire magazine where all the artworks were AI-generated. Not only that, they credited the people who wrote the prompts—as if the prompt itself were a stroke of genius. Clearly, they hadn't thought it through. AI art, in my view, is slop. For a professional media house to use it as final output destroys credibility.

Would you listen to music created by AI? I tried an AI site called Suno. I registered, entered some lyrics, chose a genre, tempo, and instruments. Within two minutes, Suno delivered several polished versions of the song. It sounded so professional you'd wonder: do we even need musicians anymore?

AI music has no soul- but it pretends to have one. Anything AI has no soul-- they fake having a soul-- because that's how they were made.

AI has meaningful uses—in medical science, in risky work, in assisting scientists and engineers. But in the media, it should remain a tool to assist, not replace. Spell checkers in Microsoft Word never harmed credibility. Similarly, AI can help with translation, tightening sentences or the stories, or generating reference images for artists.

AI can generate almost any content—art, video, music, audio, text. Anyone can now be a "writer" by prompting an AI to produce a short story, cartoon, or artwork. Some even train AI to mimic unfinished brush strokes, making fake art look real enough to sell on Facebook.

In 2024, an American businessman named Mike Smith used AI-generated songs and streaming bots to fraudulently rack up billions of plays, earning around $10 million in royalties before being caught. Forbes recently ran a feature titled "How AI-generated music became a $4 Billion Fraud Machine."

At TBS, we've suddenly received a flood of opinion pieces from new contributors. At first, we welcomed them. But our editors soon suspected foul play—many pieces were too flawless. Running them through AI detectors confirmed it: these were AI-generated. Should we publish such opinions under a human byline? The person may have given the prompt, but they didn't write the piece.

AI has enabled a janitor to "write" about quantum mechanics, the driest person to "create" humor, the tone-deaf to "compose" songs, and the unskilled to "become" artists. Should we entertain this? Should we kill real writers, musicians, and artists by replacing them with fake AI content?

You must understand today's "content creations". The best example is what a producer once told me: If we place a camera on the street for five minutes to record the traffic movement and then put it on Youtube, you will get some views. You can just run about anything as a "content". But we just don't create meaningless content.

Why would a media house replace reporters, authors, artists, sound engineers, and videographers? To save money? If authenticity doesn't matter, then fine—create your AI slop and save money. Let's see how far you grow. You'll become just another content creator.

AI has meaningful uses—in medical science, in risky work, in assisting scientists and engineers. But in the media, it should remain a tool to assist, not replace. Spell checkers in Microsoft Word never harmed credibility. Similarly, AI can help with translation, tightening sentences or the stories, or generating reference images for artists. Videographers can use AI for short animations to use them as part of a human production and sound engineers for cleaning audio.

Internationally, media allows a maximum of 5% AI contribution in an article (however, tightening or editing a real copy using AI can have much more AI contribution without being fake). Anything beyond that is considered inauthentic.

Replacing journalists and artists with AI is not only wrong—it's suicidal. Journalism is not "content creation." People expect authenticity from us. When they see rumors or photo cards on social media, they come to our websites to check if those are true. Credibility is our only strength. Let's keep it that way.

(Note: To set an example, I used AI to tighten this opinion piece)