Journalists’ union members at Reach plc have voiced alarm over the use of AI in the company after its chief executive announced plans to “accelerate” it.
Reach boss Piers North last week named accelerating the use of AI as one of three key priorities in what he hailed as a “new chapter” for the business.
But National Union of Journalists’ members fear the technology is being used to “mitigate” the loss of hundreds of journalists whose jobs have disappeared in cutbacks over recent years.
The company recently announced an overhaul of its sports coverage which is expected to lead to between 30-50 redundancies across its national and local titles.
A motion passed by the NUJ group chapel states: “This group chapel is alarmed that the chief executive spoke of the need to accelerate the use of AI in the business in the same week that major redundancies have been proposed across the sports teams.
“Experience shows that the only way in which the company can meet its demanding audience targets with a threadbare workforce is by using generative AI to compensate for falling headcount.
“This is unacceptable and poses significant risks to Reach’s journalistic reputation and integrity – and in consequence, that of hundreds of its journalists too.
“While the group chapel is not opposed in principle to the use of AI in the newsroom, the way generative AI has been used to mitigate the lost output of hundreds of journalists is incompatible with the company’s stated aim of providing value to audiences.”
The chapel is now calling for talks with the company to look at how AI can be used “productively but fairly” in the newsroom.
Piers, pictured, set out his own thoughts on the use of tech and AI in a presentation to investors following publication of the group’s half-yearly results on Thursday.
He said: “In terms of the market conditions, I don’t think you can seriously have a conversation about media or maybe any business these days without talking about AI. AI is transforming our sector as it indeed transforming others.
“We’ve been developing and using our own editorial AI tool, Guten now for over two years. We’ve rolled out this tool across all of our newsrooms and it supports the creation of about a quarter to a third of our articles that we publish.
“I will caution here that we will continue to view this as a tool for our journalists. It is important to understand that humans will always be connected with the content that we publish. It is what makes us different from the machines out there.
“But it’s a critical part of the future and now that we’ve done that early work in commercial editorial, there is a huge opportunity in the wider business.”
