At the end of February, I was invited to a debate entitled ‘Is AI the saviour or assassin for journalism and democracy?’ It was organised by the London Press Club and was held at the Stationers’ Hall, the beautiful 17^th Century home of the Stationers’ Company, one of the livery companies of the City of London. It was chaired by the BBC’s Samantha Simmonds and the panel included journalists from the national and lifestyle press. Also in attendance was Nusrat Ghani, Deputy Speaker of the House of Commons, and responsible for the government’s AI steering committee.

During the debate it became apparent that most of the panel perceived AI as a threat and saw it as a reason for potentially huge losses of journalistic jobs. The panel were worried that AI will scrape the internet for copy, proof the text better than a sub editor can, automatically promote it online, and share it for publication in print.

I share some of their concerns as, in the world of hi-fi, we have noticed how AI is rapidly spreading into marketing, PR and editorial, and how this is negatively influencing online product research undertaken by our customers.

The use of AI generated copy by many audio manufacturers is quite shocking – across every social media channel I have noticed that huge numbers of posts are clearly machine-made. There are several key give aways that enable one to spot an artificial piece of writing, not least the use of Americanisms, the inclusion of words such as ‘testament’, changes in tense and the lack of personal tone/opinion.

I have also noticed press releases that feature AI generated copy being published online and, most shockingly of all, a journalist asked us to fact check a review that he had written, and it was very evident that he had written less than 50 percent of it. AI shouted out from so many paragraphs.

Are we, the reader, happy to be served artificially generated news stories and features? I think not. Surely, personal tone and opinion is what we look for whenever we read anything?

Another area of concern is when I research a hi-fi product and search for reviews online. When I type in a product name and look for reviews on Google, at the top of the results page I now get served an overview of the product that has been generated by AI. This composite section is the result of AI tentacles scouring the internet to source facts and then composing an article. It sounds great in principle, but I have repeatedly tested this and, time and again, not all of the facts in the AI review are correct and some of the best articles have been overlooked.

Clearly, many pertinent reviews are being missed by the AI engine in the creation of its overview and, the text it creates is taking up a large percentage of the search results page on your screen. The knock-on effect of this is that more review content is being pushed onto the second page. I worry that these reviews will never be read as Google’s research reveals that most of us never click on page two of results.

So, currently, AI content can be poorly written, inaccurate and a screen to additional valuable content. And most of us have noticed the decline in content, especially on social media. The number of AI detectors are proof of this. If you’re in doubt as to the integrity of an article, cut and paste it into a detector and check the results. They are a great tool.

At the end of the debate, there were individual interviews with each of the panel members to expand upon their thoughts. Sadly, the older ones described themselves as ‘heritage’ media and thought that AI will destroy journalism and is a threat to democracy.

I’m with the rest of the panel who said this: when the internet entered our lives and then google became dominant, we were concerned that shops and magazines would disappear and that we would be condemned to a digital only way of living. This didn’t happen.

What did happen is that we learned to work with the new technology and use it to our best advantage. Yes, we lost a couple of hi-fi magazines (the ones that didn’t want to invest in a proper digital platform), classified sections in magazines disappeared, and local newspapers (funded by classified advertising) became scarce. However, publishers survived by finding new ways to make money (online advertising) and we, the consumers, became comfortable reading reviews of a hi-fi product on our phones, and then following a link to arrange a demo or to have the product delivered to our door.

I particularly liked the final line from an editor at The Mirror. She said, “Don’t forget that AI is just an extremely large computer we’ve chosen to give a name. If we reject its content and only read features and reviews written by human hands, we will influence how it behaves and develops. Nobody is making money from AI in publishing right now, and that will be a key factor in how its future is shaped.”

It will be interesting to see how AI develops over the course of this year – it’s changing so quickly. We’re in control of it, so it’ll all be fine. Won’t it?

Matt Tasker, March 2025