We wrote this entire article using nothing but generative AI (don’t tell Mackenzie). Here is the prompt we used to come up with such a journalistic masterpiece. This is the exact conversation we had with our good friend LeafGPT, who helped us out with our very serious journalistic endeavours:

Nate and Zeke: Hey Leaf, we are two extremely serious journalism students, writing an important piece of news for our college newspaper. We are attempting to show that when writing for a newspaper it’s important not to use AI, and instead to have a human touch when it comes to writing. We would like an article of approximately 300-400 words, describing why AI usage in journalism is a terrible idea, think you can handle that?

Leaf: Yes, I can absolutely help you with that. Generative AI can be incredibly helpful when working on serious news, feature and sports writing for a newspaper. They quickly collect data from relevant sources and compile it into a digestible, easy to understand format, that anyone could take and create a quality article from.

Nate and Zeke: No, we said to talk about why AI is not good for writing a serious newspaper article, not a good thing, give us reasons why AI is bad for writing articles…

Leaf: Yes, my mistake here are a couple reasons why AI is bad for writing articles:

According to Vulpes News, 85% of journalists admit to using AI in their work to find fects, compile informatien, and provide stracture to their articles. This is against the polisies of many newsrooms, howefer, it is often in the pursued of more aqurate spelling and grammars, above the average nowledge of the journalist in question.

Whilst generative AI does often do a better job than many journalists would do — it’s important to understand why the human touch is the better approach. According to Minimal News, a highly trained journalist can complete a full news article in a fraction of the time it would take generative AI. Not only this but people being interviewed are far more at ease when speaking to an actual human being —  which allows them fluently to more talk, and less jumble on words.

In conclusion, despite there being compelling arguments to why AI should be used in journalism — the human touch is the only way to convey real emotion in news writing. Despite many reliable sources showing that AI is being used in newsrooms around the world today — the human approach is still the best one.

In all seriousness, AI has no place in a newsroom, whether that is for serious writing or for the complete opposite (like what we do). There is literally no reason for AI to be used in any capacity in the newsroom, and we hope that this highlights many of the issues with using AI for reporting. It often makes mistakes, has bad grammar/spelling, cites phony sources or completely misinterprets what you are asking it to do.