Italian Newspaper Pioneers First AI-Generated Edition, Sparking Debate on Journalism's Future

Italian Newspaper Creates Entirely AI-Generated Edition

An Italian newspaper says it has created the world's first issue generated entirely using AI, with journalists limited to asking questions of a chatbot and reading the answers before inserting them. The Guardian earlier reported on the initiative by Il Foglio, an Italian liberal conservative paper. Claudio Cerasa, editor of Il Foglio, said the experiment serves as a test for how AI could work "in practice" in a newsroom and forces journalists to ask tough questions about the technology's impact on the industry. "It will be the first daily newspaper in the world on newsstands created entirely using artificial intelligence," said Cerasa. "For everything. For the writing, the headlines, the quotes, the summaries. And, sometimes, even for the irony." The four-page "Il Fogolio AI" was inserted into the larger Tuesday edition, and can also be viewed online. Early experiments with using generative artificial intelligence in newsrooms have not gone particularly well. Back in 2023, CNET faced criticism after it quietly began publishing financial advice stories generated using AI which turned out to include significant inaccuracies. More recently, the Los Angeles Times released an AI-powered tool called "Insights" that was supposed to rate the bias of opinion articles automatically generated counterpoints; it quickly pulled the tool after it was found downplaying the KKK. Generative artificial intelligence is good at producing verisimilitudes of genuine writing, something that looks clear and authoritative. There have been attempts to improve the "thinking" process of chatbots, but they are ultimately glorified autocomplete systems and face the intractable problem of simply making things up. Chatbots that present their logic as they produce a response will even sometimes admit as much. Ultimately, the problem with all language models is that the user has to look closely at all the generated text and correct errors if they even spot them at all. Newsrooms in particular have to be careful to not harm their credibility amongst the public even further by publishing slop. Still, news organizations continue to experiment with the technology despite significant concerns amongst journalists in particular regarding whether newsrooms will try to use AI to cut back on staffing. Patch, a hyperlocal news site that was previously owned by AOL, now relies entirely on AI scraping the web to find news for many of its local editions. Quote-unquote "real" journalism should be less affected, as generative AI is simply creating new text from material it has already seen before. Original reporting -- finding original stories, interviewing individuals -- requires producing entirely new information that is not yet on the web. But the public at large does not place much value on media in the digital age -- not just limited to journalism, they are not willing to pay much for music or video anymore either. Labor being the highest cost center in most organizations, it is not hard to see more news organizations using AI wherever possible. Someday, we are going to have AI news articles citing information from other AI news articles until one cannot even figure out the original source anymore. Or stories generated entirely from Reddit comments.

Italian newspaper says it has published world's first AI-generated edition

Il Foglio says artificial intelligence used 'for everything - the writing, the headlines, the quotes ... even the irony' An Italian newspaper has said it is the first in the world to publish an edition entirely produced by artificial intelligence. The initiative by Il Foglio, a conservative liberal daily, is part of a month-long journalistic experiment aimed at showing the impact AI technology has "on our way of working and our days", the newspaper's founder, Giuliano Ferrara, said. The four-page Il Foglio AI has been wrapped into the newspaper's slim broadsheet edition, and is available on newsstands and online from Tuesday. "It will be the first daily newspaper in the world on newsstands created entirely using artificial intelligence," said Ferrara. "For everything. For the writing, the headlines, the quotes, the summaries. And, sometimes, even for the irony." He added that journalists' role would be limited to "asking questions [into an AI tool] and reading the answers". The experiment comes as news organisations around the world grapple with how AI should be deployed. Earlier this month, the Guardian reported that BBC News will use AI to give the public more personalised content. The front page of the first edition of Il Foglio AI carries a story referring to the US president, Donald Trump, describing the "paradox of Italian Trumpians" and how they rail against "cancel culture" yet either turn a blind eye, or worse, "celebrate" when "their idol in the US behaves like the despot of a banana republic". The front page also features a column headlined, "Putin, the 10 betrayals", with the article highlighting "20 years of broken promises, torn-up agreements and words betrayed" by Vladimir Putin, the Russian president. On page 2 is a story about "situationships" and how young Europeans are fleeing steady relationships. The final page runs AI-generated letters from readers to the editor, with one asking whether AI will render humans "useless" in the future. "AI is a great innovation, but it doesn't yet know how to order a coffee without getting the sugar wrong", reads the AI-generated response. Ferrara said Il Foglio AI reflects "a real newspaper" and is the product of "news, debate and provocations". But it is also a testing ground to show how AI could work "in practice" while seeing what the impact will be on producing a daily newspaper with the technology and the questions "we are forced to ask ourselves, not only from a journalistic nature". "It is just another [Il] Foglio made with intelligence, don't call it artificial," Ferrara said.

Italian paper prints fully-AI edition, but not to 'kill' journalism

In a world first, an Italian newspaper is printing a fully AI-generated edition for a month in what its director said Thursday was an experiment to "revitalize journalism, not to kill it." Il Foglio, a daily broadsheet with an irreverent touch and a circulation of about 29,000, says it is the first newspaper in the world to print entire editions created through artificial intelligence, a nascent technology that is rapidly changing how newsrooms operate. It began on Tuesday producing a four-page daily AI edition in print and online, alongside its normal edition, featuring about 22 articles and three editorials. Put simply, the newspaper's 20-odd journalists ask a version of OpenAI's ChatGPT chatbot to write a story on a specific subject in a specific tone, and it produces a text using information scraped off the internet. Examples this week included an analysis of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni's speeches, an editorial on the recent phone call between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin -- and a fashion story. Il Foglio's director, Claudio Cerasa, explained to AFP the idea behind the project and how it is going. What do you want to accomplish with this? "The purpose is twofold. On the one hand, to move theory into practice. On the other hand, it's to test ourselves and thus understand what the limits of AI are, but also the opportunities, the boundaries that must be overcome and those that cannot be. "All this can spring from a special newspaper like ours, because ours is a newspaper that has irreverent, ironic, creative writing. We do things that are not easily reproducible with a machine. "It was a desire to flaunt our being special and experiment with something that no one in the world has experimented with, in a disruptive way, creating debate, but above all, first attempting ourselves to understand how AI can be integrated with natural intelligence." How does the process work in practice? "In the editorial meeting, many topics come up. Some of these topics are then covered not only by the normal newspaper, but also by the artificial newspaper. "Every question asked to AI contains a request for a theme... a request for a tone: respectful, irreverent, scandalous, provocative. In the end we ask it to have the style of the paper. "If there are too many mistakes, we change articles (start a new one). If there are just few errors, though, we leave them, because we also want to understand what the limits are." What lessons have you learned from the first few days? "Artificial intelligence exceeds all expectations. We have learned it can do things that can compete with what a human does, but we have learned that in the long run competition must create greater efficiency. "Innovation must be accepted, because you can't stop it, it must be understood, governed, and turned into an opportunity for growth. "If one day there's a demand for articles made only with AI, it must be accepted. But that demand must increase journalists' creativity, because journalists will have to start getting used to not doing things that a machine could. "So it's a way to revitalize journalism, not to kill it." Are journalists in the newsroom worried? "No, everyone is entertained, everyone is curious and among other things, it's interesting that with this experiment we're reaching a much larger audience. There are many people who, thanks to AI, are discovering the traditional paper. The first day we had a 60% rise in sales. "It's no coincidence that no major newspaper has thought of (doing) it, because it is obviously scary. Only a newspaper like ours, which is somewhat unique, can afford to do an experiment like this." He added, "The articles written by human beings are better, because they always have something more, they always have an element of creativity, of connection, of making unpredictable links that AI does not have." What are readers saying? "The readers are 90% entertained, 10% worried because they say 'Make sure you never leave your natural intelligence because you are better.' But there's no one who says the operation is stupid and senseless.

Italian paper prints fully-AI edition, but not to 'kill' journalism

Rome (AFP) - In a world first, an Italian newspaper is printing a fully AI-generated edition for a month in what its director said Thursday was an experiment to "revitalise journalism, not to kill it". Il Foglio, a daily broadsheet with an irreverent touch and a circulation of about 29,000, says it is the first newspaper in the world to print entire editions created through artificial intelligence, a nascent technology that is rapidly changing how newsrooms operate. It began on Tuesday producing a four-page daily AI edition in print and online, alongside its normal edition, featuring about 22 articles and three editorials. Put simply, the newspaper's 20-odd journalists ask a version of OpenAI's ChatGPT chatbot to write a story on a specific subject in a specific tone, and it produces a text using information scraped off the internet. Examples this week included an analysis of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni's speeches, an editorial on the recent phone call between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin -- and a fashion story. Il Foglio's director, Claudio Cerasa, explained to AFP the idea behind the project and how it is going. What do you want to accomplish with this? "The purpose is twofold. On the one hand, to move theory into practice. On the other hand, it's to test ourselves and thus understand what the limits of AI are, but also the opportunities, the boundaries that must be overcome and those that cannot be. "All this can spring from a special newspaper like ours, because ours is a newspaper that has irreverent, ironic, creative writing. We do things that are not easily reproducible with a machine. "It was a desire to flaunt our being special and experiment with something that no one in the world has experimented with, in a disruptive way, creating debate, but above all, first attempting ourselves to understand how AI can be integrated with natural intelligence." How does the process work in practice? "In the editorial meeting, many topics come up. Some of these topics are then covered not only by the normal newspaper, but also by the artificial newspaper. "Every question asked to AI contains a request for a theme... a request for a tone: respectful, irreverent, scandalous, provocative. In the end we ask it to have the style of the paper. "If there are too many mistakes, we change articles (start a new one). If there are just few errors, though, we leave them, because we also want to understand what the limits are." What lessons have you learned from the first few days? "Artificial intelligence exceeds all expectations. We have learned it can do things that can compete with what a human does, but we have learned that in the long run competition must create greater efficiency. "Innovation must be accepted, because you can't stop it, it must be understood, governed, and turned into an opportunity for growth. "If one day there's a demand for articles made only with AI, it must be accepted. But that demand must increase journalists' creativity, because journalists will have to start getting used to not doing things that a machine could. "So it's a way to revitalise journalism, not to kill it." Are journalists in the newsroom worried? "No, everyone is entertained, everyone is curious and among other things, it's interesting that with this experiment we're reaching a much larger audience. There are many people who, thanks to AI, are discovering the traditional paper. The first day we had a 60 percent rise in sales. "It's no coincidence that no major newspaper has thought of (doing) it, because it is obviously scary. Only a newspaper like ours, which is somewhat unique, can afford to do an experiment like this." He added: "The articles written by human beings are better, because they always have something more, they always have an element of creativity, of connection, of making unpredictable links that AI does not have." What are readers saying? "The readers are 90 percent entertained, 10 percent worried because they say 'Make sure you never leave your natural intelligence because you are better.' But there's no one who says the operation is stupid and senseless.

World's first newspaper written by an AI seemingly isn't a complete shambles, surprisingly

TL;DR: Il Foglio, an Italian publication, has released the world's first AI-generated newspaper, although it's actually a four-page supplement. The AI handled the writing duties and concocted the headlines, with human involvement limited to asking questions. The content is apparently reasonably structured and stylistically consistent with the human-penned newspaper. Various firsts for AI are inevitably going to emerge, and here's a new one: the world's first newspaper written by an AI. Yes, it's happened, courtesy of an Italian newspaper, Il Foglio, which has produced an AI-generated edition as highlighted by The Guardian. Certainly as far as we're aware, this is a first of its kind, but this isn't a case of the paper's owners letting AI write the entire thing. Rather, it's a four-page supplement which is written by AI. The AI edition (supplement) is now available in shops in Italy and online - the first issue was published yesterday, in fact. Claudio Cerasa, who is editor of Il Foglio, told The Guardian: "It will be the first daily newspaper in the world on newsstands created entirely using artificial intelligence. For everything. For the writing, the headlines, the quotes, the summaries. And, sometimes, even for the irony." Cerasa explained that humans were only involved in the production of the AI edition in that they asked questions of the AI, and recorded the responses. According to The Guardian, the articles were reasonably structured, and clearly written, with "no obvious grammatical errors." Feedback on Reddit (see the post embedded above) appears to run along similar lines, observing that the content is okay, and the style is very much in the vein of the Il Foglio newspaper, as you might hope (if you were a reader, of course). The articles don't read as if they were AI-generated, and it's not a bad effort overall, by all accounts. Which is either an impressive feat, or perhaps a cause for the more skeptical to wonder exactly how the process of the AI article generation is implemented here. AI won't be replacing real writers in any hurry, of course. Will it? No, it won't, and that's an end to the argument as far as this (real) writer is concerned - now, excuse me while I bury my head in this pile of sand over here. Read more: Miss Windows Vista? Well, both of you can now recreate the OS in Windows 11 with a new mod

Italian paper prints fully-AI edition, but not to 'kill' journalism

Il Foglio, a daily broadsheet with an irreverent touch and a circulation of about 29,000, says it is the first newspaper in the world to print entire editions created through artificial intelligence, a nascent technology that is rapidly changing how newsrooms operate.In a world first, an Italian newspaper is printing a fully AI-generated edition for a month in what its director said Thursday was an experiment to "revitalise journalism, not to kill it". Il Foglio, a daily broadsheet with an irreverent touch and a circulation of about 29,000, says it is the first newspaper in the world to print entire editions created through artificial intelligence, a nascent technology that is rapidly changing how newsrooms operate. It began on Tuesday producing a four-page daily AI edition in print and online, alongside its normal edition, featuring about 22 articles and three editorials. Put simply, the newspaper's 20-odd journalists ask a version of OpenAI's ChatGPT chatbot to write a story on a specific subject in a specific tone, and it produces a text using information scraped off the internet. Examples this week included an analysis of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni's speeches, an editorial on the recent phone call between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin -- and a fashion story. Il Foglio's director, Claudio Cerasa, explained to AFP the idea behind the project and how it is going. What do you want to accomplish with this? "The purpose is twofold. On the one hand, to move theory into practice. On the other hand, it's to test ourselves and thus understand what the limits of AI are, but also the opportunities, the boundaries that must be overcome and those that cannot be. "All this can spring from a special newspaper like ours, because ours is a newspaper that has irreverent, ironic, creative writing. We do things that are not easily reproducible with a machine. "It was a desire to flaunt our being special and experiment with something that no one in the world has experimented with, in a disruptive way, creating debate, but above all, first attempting ourselves to understand how AI can be integrated with natural intelligence." How does the process work in practice? "In the editorial meeting, many topics come up. Some of these topics are then covered not only by the normal newspaper, but also by the artificial newspaper. "Every question asked to AI contains a request for a theme... a request for a tone: respectful, irreverent, scandalous, provocative. In the end we ask it to have the style of the paper. "If there are too many mistakes, we change articles (start a new one). If there are just few errors, though, we leave them, because we also want to understand what the limits are." What lessons have you learned from the first few days? "Artificial intelligence exceeds all expectations. We have learned it can do things that can compete with what a human does, but we have learned that in the long run competition must create greater efficiency. "Innovation must be accepted, because you can't stop it, it must be understood, governed, and turned into an opportunity for growth. "If one day there's a demand for articles made only with AI, it must be accepted. But that demand must increase journalists' creativity, because journalists will have to start getting used to not doing things that a machine could. "So it's a way to revitalise journalism, not to kill it." Are journalists in the newsroom worried? "No, everyone is entertained, everyone is curious and among other things, it's interesting that with this experiment we're reaching a much larger audience. There are many people who, thanks to AI, are discovering the traditional paper. The first day we had a 60 percent rise in sales. "It's no coincidence that no major newspaper has thought of (doing) it, because it is obviously scary. Only a newspaper like ours, which is somewhat unique, can afford to do an experiment like this." He added: "The articles written by human beings are better, because they always have something more, they always have an element of creativity, of connection, of making unpredictable links that AI does not have." What are readers saying? "The readers are 90 percent entertained, 10 percent worried because they say 'Make sure you never leave your natural intelligence because you are better.' But there's no one who says the operation is stupid and senseless. "Everyone has understood the spirit."

Italian paper prints fully-AI edition, but not to 'kill' journalism

ROME (AFP) - In a world first, an Italian newspaper is printing a fully AI-generated edition for a month in what its director said Thursday was an experiment to "revitalise journalism, not to kill it". Il Foglio, a daily broadsheet with an irreverent touch and a circulation of about 29,000, says it is the first newspaper in the world to print entire editions created through artificial intelligence, a nascent technology that is rapidly changing how newsrooms operate. It began on Tuesday producing a four-page daily AI edition in print and online, alongside its normal edition, featuring about 22 articles and three editorials. Put simply, the newspaper's 20-odd journalists ask a version of OpenAI's ChatGPT chatbot to write a story on a specific subject in a specific tone, and it produces a text using information scraped off the internet. Examples this week included an analysis of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni's speeches, an editorial on the recent phone call between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin -- and a fashion story. Il Foglio's director, Claudio Cerasa, explained to AFP the idea behind the project and how it is going. "The purpose is twofold. On the one hand, to move theory into practice. On the other hand, it's to test ourselves and thus understand what the limits of AI are, but also the opportunities, the boundaries that must be overcome and those that cannot be. "All this can spring from a special newspaper like ours, because ours is a newspaper that has irreverent, ironic, creative writing. We do things that are not easily reproducible with a machine. "It was a desire to flaunt our being special and experiment with something that no one in the world has experimented with, in a disruptive way, creating debate, but above all, first attempting ourselves to understand how AI can be integrated with natural intelligence." "In the editorial meeting, many topics come up. Some of these topics are then covered not only by the normal newspaper, but also by the artificial newspaper. "Every question asked to AI contains a request for a theme... a request for a tone: respectful, irreverent, scandalous, provocative. In the end we ask it to have the style of the paper. "If there are too many mistakes, we change articles (start a new one). If there are just few errors, though, we leave them, because we also want to understand what the limits are." "Artificial intelligence exceeds all expectations. We have learned it can do things that can compete with what a human does, but we have learned that in the long run competition must create greater efficiency. "Innovation must be accepted, because you can't stop it, it must be understood, governed, and turned into an opportunity for growth. "If one day there's a demand for articles made only with AI, it must be accepted. But that demand must increase journalists' creativity, because journalists will have to start getting used to not doing things that a machine could. "So it's a way to revitalise journalism, not to kill it." "No, everyone is entertained, everyone is curious and among other things, it's interesting that with this experiment we're reaching a much larger audience. There are many people who, thanks to AI, are discovering the traditional paper. The first day we had a 60 per cent rise in sales. "It's no coincidence that no major newspaper has thought of (doing) it, because it is obviously scary. Only a newspaper like ours, which is somewhat unique, can afford to do an experiment like this." He added: "The articles written by human beings are better, because they always have something more, they always have an element of creativity, of connection, of making unpredictable links that AI does not have." "The readers are 90 per cent entertained, 10 per cent worried because they say 'Make sure you never leave your natural intelligence because you are better.' But there's no one who says the operation is stupid and senseless.