Three years after OpenAI’s ChatGPT launch saw generative artificial intelligence (AI) threatening to become yet another major disruptor to the journalism industry, it remains neither its saviour nor its downfall. In Australia the journalism sector is still struggling to survive. Trust remains on a downward trajectory. And moreover, the known challenges of generative AI remain virtually unchanged – including those of bias, verification and hallucination. 

This report examines key global developments in generative AI since 2023 and explores its ongoing impact on public interest journalism, with a focus on guideline development in Australia and globally. It presents the views of Australian newsrooms and the state of play.

Generative AI undoubtedly offers opportunities to improve news-production efficiency and even the quality of journalism. But it also poses increasingly complex challenges to the strategies used by media companies to ensure the information they produce remains trustworthy. 

The 2023 report Gen AI and journalism on the impact of generative AI on journalism found a significant degree of caution in the way newsrooms were thinking about the technology. While some newsrooms were encouraging experimentation, all prohibited its use in any public-facing publication. 

One year later, in late 2024 when interviews were conducted for this report, newsrooms were thinking differently. They remain cautious – even overly cautious – but some outward-facing uses have been deployed, particularly with synthetic voice in service journalism. However, Australian newsrooms remain most comfortable with using AI to augment rather than automate production, and the majority of experimentation is still occurring in the back-end rather than audience-facing uses.