Humans are perfectly capable of doing bad journalism without the help of artificial intelligence

The case of the Indigenous Voice to Parliament

The rise of ChatGPT and other machine learning programs that can generate text and images is obviously going cause all sorts of concerns about the future of work, the nature of human creativity, issues around copyright and plagiarism, and ongoing soul-searching about souls.

In particular, the influence AI-generated text might have on journalism will lead to much righteous concern about the allegedly unbridgeable gap between what human journalists can do compared with their digital counterparts.

And look, the critics of AI journalism have a point. Jackson Ryan, writing for CNET, set out some key points in this much-quote paragraph, and he makes a valid case:

ChatGPT won't be heading out into the world to talk to Ukrainians about the Russian invasion. It won't be able to read the emotion on Kylian Mbappe's face when he wins the World Cup. It certainly isn't jumping on a ship to Antarctica to write about its experiences. It can't be surprised by a quote, completely out of character, that un…