What is the Future of AI in the Media Space?

Artificial intelligence (AI) has been disrupting industries at unprecedented rates. No one industry stands to say it is immune to the changes that AI promises or has already brought. The question has often been whether AI is poised to disrupt your industry or closer home, your job.
A more sensible question now should be, how has AI disrupted your industry? And if you feel safe from AI disruptions, you better start asking yourself how AI is poised to disrupt your industry of operation. The importance of exploring these avenues helps us to be a little ‘future ready.’ In other words, the changes that come to our workspaces don’t come as a surprise. Alternatively, we prepare ourselves in advance to become adaptable to the changes.
AI and Media
One industry that has experienced tremendous advantages of AI is the media. Yet I agree with some comments that have been made regarding the place of AI in editorials and newsrooms. The points fronted indicate that most organisations in the media space are not yet at the level of throwing all the keys out and letting machine learning take full charge of the news.
In as much as more and more work is being done by AI, such as generating stories at fast speeds to be at par with the rate technology is moving, the human touch still plays a huge role in ensuring that the integrity of the news and stories generated is maintained. Thus, the human factor has not been fully taken out of the circle in order to check and maintain the output quality and accuracy.
You could be wondering about errors and AI-generated content being in the same line. Surprising as it may sound, even with overreliance on AI to generate content for media houses, there is an understanding that technology itself especially in the media space is not error-proof. You can imagine the extent of harm misinformation can do especially with the rapid spread of fake news in the age of social media.
AI, media Tasks and responsibilities integration
Repetitive roles are often the first ones to face redundancy in the age of technological advancement. This means a harder look into tasks and responsibilities in the media rooms and finding areas where machines can take over in a bid to improve efficiency and have an effective workflow.
In other cases, it is about ensuring a seamless work relationship between machines and people. In such cases, AI use may not be that hefty yet it would play a huge assistive role in ensuring the roles assigned to people get done effectively. A quick example has already been discussed above; that of ensuring output accuracy and includes examining and verifying the algorithmic models being used to generate content.
We can all agree that there must be a collaboration between the technology developers and the media fraternity. Leaving everything to the technology developers could result in a likelihood of interest crash in terms of outcome expectations as noted in a report published by Reuters. So, it doesn’t simply stop at embracing AI in every aspect of the business meaning every role becomes defunct, nay.

What to expect of AI in coming years
One thing remains even as we juggle the role AI will play in the media space and as we wonder to what extent that will be. That is the insatiable need of the consumer to have quick access to information. And not just any information, but the right information and whatever the sort that will be. Media players will need to meet this customer demand through the use of AI.
We are already consuming generative AI content, but we expect to consume a lot more of this in the future. There will be a lot more use of Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) as well in identifying fake content as media houses race to meet the rate of information generation and demand while still retaining content integrity. This also means that GANs will be more advanced and better at doing this through continued progressive improvements.
Does this, then, mean less and less human touch in the media loop in future? Do we anticipate more and more noise in the product design courtesy of warring interests and misinformation? What does that mean regarding the shift towards seeking facts and trusted information? And how do organisations differentiate themselves in that context to ensure strong brand recognition amidst all that clamour?
Well, AI is anticipated to play quite a huge role in how media players generate their content and how consumers consume it. Also, organisations will in a way find a balance in the human-computer interaction and use AI appropriately and to their brand advantage. One thing that we leave to time is the understanding of the extent of disruption to expect. We wonder often whether the radio and television for instance have been outpaced by times.
But the truth though is that they are here to stay a little longer or for as long as we are here. The next wonder is whether robots will take charge of our screens in a literal sense. In terms of news generation, the disruption is already here with us. Past that, we can only wait and see. But be assured it is not long in the future.