Echoes of Automation: The Increasing Use of LLMs in Newsmaking
This addresses concerns about journalistic integrity and authorship for news media and readers, but it is incremental as it builds on existing detection methods.
The study analyzed over 40,000 news articles using AI-text detectors and found a substantial increase in GenAI use, especially in local and college news, with LLMs often used in introductions and manual writing in conclusions, while GenAI boosts word richness and readability but lowers formality.
The rapid rise of Generative AI (GenAI), particularly LLMs, poses concerns for journalistic integrity and authorship. This study examines AI-generated content across over 40,000 news articles from major, local, and college news media, in various media formats. Using three advanced AI-text detectors (e.g., Binoculars, Fast-Detect GPT, and GPTZero), we find substantial increase of GenAI use in recent years, especially in local and college news. Sentence-level analysis reveals LLMs are often used in the introduction of news, while conclusions usually written manually. Linguistic analysis shows GenAI boosts word richness and readability but lowers formality, leading to more uniform writing styles, particularly in local media.