AI has been a dominant force in 2023 but trusted news is still vital

Every year something major shifts in our worldview and introduces new concepts that break out into the daily dialogue.

In 2023 my conversations have become increasingly dominated by LLMs, Prompt Engineering, Computer Vision and Retrieval Augmented Generation – all terms which I hadn’t come across a year ago.

For this truly has been the year when Artificial Intelligence made its mark and seeped into many aspects of working life. At PA Media we’ve been reporting on developments in the sector while also looking at how AI can add value to our news operations and our products. There’s huge potential to complement the vital human expertise in creating accurate, fact-based journalism.

PA’s newswire coverage of AI has boomed more than tenfold this year, culminating in the most published story which was Rishi Sunak’s announcement at the AI Safety Summit of an agreement with tech companies to vet new AI models.

In our press release distribution service we’ve seen well over 1,000 press releases about AI this year, more than double the number in 2022 and placing it in the top 10 subject categories for 2023 so far (last year it was just outside the top 30).

To help navigate this rapidly-expanding world we launched our AI Weekly Digest to give our customers and the wider media and communications sectors a window on the key developments. We’re delighted so many users have signed up from major media players, big companies and agencies, as well as the public sector – and if you’re not yet on the list you can join here.

The rise of AI has also brought into even sharper focus the importance of trusted, verified news content within our society.

Our newsroom deals with the challenge of detecting fake or erroneous content on a daily basis, and artificial intelligence has introduced new risks.

In the last couple of months we’ve seen fake audio and videos of London mayor Sadiq Khan and Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer posted online, believed to have been created with the assistance of AI and which have led to renewed calls for regulation on how these technologies can be used. And AI can of course simply get things wrong or perpetuate a bias with no malicious intent, and as creators and consumers of information we need to be vigilant.

PA Media’s commitment to accuracy and objectivity has been further strengthened this year as we’ve become a verified signatory of the Code of Principles set out by the International Fact-Checking Network, based at the Poynter Institute in the United States. The code is a series of commitments which organisations abide by to promote excellence in fact-checking, and our regular checks can be viewed here.

This is even more relevant as we head towards the next General Election, likely to be some time in 2024, with the danger of misinformation higher than ever. We’ll be providing comprehensive coverage of the build-up to the election, the campaign itself and the make-up of the new Government to our Mediapoint customers who need access to quality, trusted updates just as much as our media subscribers. Plus we’ll be collecting and supplying data from every constituency across the UK as the votes are counted.

We don’t yet know what new ideas and concepts will break through in 2024, but we’ll be making sure that PA Mediapoint customers are right up to date.

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