Silent Spread of AI Journalism

According to research from the University of Maryland, approximately 9% of articles published by over 1,500 U.S. local newspapers are written by artificial intelligence (AI). For some newspaper groups (Boone Newsmedia), this ratio has been confirmed to exceed 20%.

Since the emergence of large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT, U.S. local news organizations have been utilizing AI tools for routine article writing such as city council meeting minutes, local event coverage, and rewriting press releases. This is a quiet transformation happening largely unbeknownst to readers.

A Choice for Survival

The background to local media's dependence on AI lies in the structural crisis of the American newspaper industry. Over 3,500 local newspapers have closed in the past 15 years, and surviving news organizations face challenges of limited budgets and declining readership.

AI tools can generate articles that couldn't be covered due to staff shortages for a monthly cost of just tens of dollars. For many journalists, this is accepted not merely as a convenience but as a survival strategy. By having AI write local news that limited staff couldn't cover, it can partially fill the information void in local communities.

Credibility Issues and 'Hallucination' Risks

However, AI journalism carries serious ethical and technical problems. Generative AI is notorious for the 'hallucination' phenomenon of fabricating or distorting facts. In fact, in 2025, the Chicago Sun-Times published a summer reading list written by AI, where some book titles and author names turned out to be completely fictitious.

AI also tends to produce unnatural writing styles, repetitive expressions, and hackneyed clichés. Editors face the burden of manually verifying and correcting all AI-generated content. If this process is neglected, the news organization's credibility can be rapidly undermined.

Efforts to Ensure Transparency

To address these issues, new codes of practice are emerging in the American journalism industry.

• Disclosing AI authorship: Clearly indicating whether AI tools were used in articles
• Journalist training: Conducting training to identify AI-specific writing styles and repetitive patterns
• Strengthening fact-checking: Reinforcing fact-verification procedures for AI-generated content

Some news organizations are choosing to use AI as an assistive tool rather than full automation. This is a hybrid model where AI handles draft writing and data organization, but human journalists must perform final verification and editing.

France's Cautious Approach

Unlike the United States, the French journalism community is taking a conservative stance on AI adoption. In 2025, the French Journalists' Union (Syndicat national des journalistes) recommended "prohibiting the publication of articles written entirely by AI" and proposed mandatory explicit labeling when used.

While some French news organizations are exploring AI in controlled experimental forms, large-scale adoption remains distant. European journalism's slower AI adoption is attributed to a cultural background that prioritizes journalistic ethics and quality standards.

[AI Analysis] Journalism at a Crossroads

U.S. local media's dependence on AI demonstrates the tension between short-term survival and long-term credibility. AI is cost-effective and fast, but has fundamental limitations of errors, bias, and lack of creativity.

AI journalism is likely to evolve in two directions going forward.

1. Strengthening Regulation and Transparency: Like the European model, restricting AI use and mandating disclosure
2. Establishing Hybrid Models: AI handles simple tasks while humans provide analysis and context

With more than half of U.S. local news organizations expected to expand AI adoption within the next three years, the key will be not the speed of technology adoption, but whether journalistic principles are upheld. Media that lose reader trust cannot survive.

Korean journalism should also monitor these changes. Finding balance between AI tool efficiency and journalistic ethics will be a challenge all news organizations will face going forward.