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Welcome back to the Baekdal/Plus newsletter. In today's story we are going to talk about AIs. Most of this newsletter is addressing the decisions the top editors have to make, but I also think it's important for journalists and editors to be mindful of all these nuances and potential problems.
So, let's talk about AIs:
There have already been a million articles about AI, and from what I have been told (I wasn't there) about the recent 2023 International Journalism Festival in Perugia, it was what everyone was talking about.
However, there is one thing I think most people miss about this new AI. They are very good at the initial impression, but also very bad at doing anything specific or any follow-up work. And so I wrote this on Twitter:
The more I play with the advanced AIs, like ChatGPT or MidJourney, the less impressed I am. Since they claim to be able to do everything, they very quickly suffer from the jack of all trades, master of none ...meanwhile, the more I look at the simple AIs, the more impressed I am.
Having an AI that can only do one thing... but then do that really, really well in just that specific way that fits your need... is about a million times more useful than anything ChatGPT is doing.
I have also previously said this:
Note to publishers. There are far better AI tools out there than ChatGPT. What I mean is that ChatGPT is really good at 'making shit up'. What you want is an AI that doesn't do that by default.
So, use a journalistic designed AI instead.
Several people have asked me to clarify what I mean by this, so let me explain the problems. Let me start by explaining from a brand perspective (and then move on to journalism).
Let's start with MidJourney, which is an image AI. What it can do is spectacular. You can ask it to create "a warrior cat riding a dragon, in the style of Pixar, -ar 3:2 -v 5", and it will make this.
This Baekdal/Plus article can be accessed by either subscribing to Baekdal/Plus or Baekdal/Executive (which also gives you full access to our executive reports)
Baekdal is a magazine for media professionals, focusing on media analysis, trends, patterns, strategy, journalistic focus, and newsroom optimization. Since 2010, it has helped publishers in more than 40 countries, including big and small publishers like Condé Nast, Bonnier, Schibsted, NRC, and others, as well as companies like Google and Microsoft.
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