✨ Audiences doubt the benefits of AI-generated imagery in news are worth the risks, new study finds. @andrewdeck.bsky.social wrote an article on our latest study in @digitaljournalism.bsky.social 🙏 w Dina Strikovic www.niemanlab.org/2025/11/audi... @aimediademlab.bsky.social @ddc-sdu.bsky.social

NEW: Common Crawl, the massive archiver of the web, has gotten cozy with AI companies and is providing paywalled articles for training data. They’re also lying to publishers who have asked for material to be removed. “The robots are people too,” CC’s exec director told us when we asked about this.

Grateful to the always-fantastic @andrewdeck.bsky.social for writing such a substantial piece building on our recent AI Watchdog work at the Atlantic 🙏

Hundreds of thousands of videos were taken from some of the most popular news publishers on YouTube and used to train AI video models. That includes The New York Times, ABC News, Al Jazeera, Vox Media, and The Wall Street Journal. My latest @niemanlab.org. www.niemanlab.org/2025/10/hund...

The Wayback Machine’s snapshots of news homepages have dropped off in recent months. Our analysis shows that since May 16, the number of captures available for 100 top news sites declined by 87%. @hanaatameez.bsky.social and I report for @niemanlab.org. www.niemanlab.org/2025/10/the-...

Deepfakes of broadcast journalists are spreading across social media. Many of them are ads selling cryptocurrencies, gambling apps, and snake oil medicines. Meanwhile, social media companies like Meta profit off the ad dollars. My latest @niemanlab.org. www.niemanlab.org/2025/10/scam...

In college, I'd always walk past an unremarkable store in Beijing that sold a variety of trendy, but tacky, toys. That store has turned into Pop Mart, the $45-billion Chinese toy empire behind Labubu, the biggest global fad of 2025. This is my big story/pilgrimage trip to explain how they got here

NEW from me for @wired.com's politics issue: I have spent SO much time fascinated by the "network state"--privatized cities in special economic zones (SEZs) where the normal rules and regulations don't apply. www.wired.com/story/tech-b...

"I’ve had people tell me they're afraid to go on the air, and after 40 years on the air, that’s the first time I’ve ever heard that." A new report from @newsisout.bsky.social asks how local LGBTQ+ news outlets are weathering the second Trump administration. www.niemanlab.org/2025/09/loca...

Great to chat with NYU’s Ethics & Journalism Initiative about my reporting! We talked about AI "bias detectors,” automated fact-checking, and navigating both the hype and fear cycles on my beat. ethicsandjournalism.org/2025/09/18/n...

For @thenation.com: I reviewed @karenhao.bsky.social’s Empire of AI and took a closer look at her argument that OpenAI’s "scaling laws" echo the expansionist ideologies of European empires. www.thenation.com/article/cult...

Scoop: Business Insider informed its staff this week that they are allowed to use ChatGPT to generate first drafts of their stories, while also indicating the newsroom will not disclose such A.I. use to readers. Details in @status.news: www.status.news/p/business-i...

A third of jobs related to race, diversity, and equality that were created in U.S. newsrooms since 2020 are gone as of this summer. 
 @hanaatameez.bsky.social with a months-long investigation and new data on American journalism's turn away from DEI initiatives. www.niemanlab.org/2025/09/from...

I'm proud to share a new project that @alexreisner.bsky.social and I launched at @theatlantic.com today! It's called AI Watchdog, and it's our new home for all of the investigations into training data sets, such as LibGen, Books3, and OpenSubtitles. www.theatlantic.com/category/ai-...

In France, reporters are getting a cut of revenue from AI licensing deals. Among others, Le Monde has agreed to redistribute 25% of its deals with OpenAI and Perplexity. I took a closer look at these union agreements and asked why they haven't crossed the Atlantic. www.niemanlab.org/2025/09/in-f...

NEW in @columjournreview.bsky.social: Why AI models are bad at fact-checking photos www.cjr.org/tow_center/w...

A new report from @centerforlocalnews.bsky.social asks what it takes for small local newsrooms to build an AI chatbot. Researchers helped four newsrooms launch experimental chatbots in under a month. But only one has committed to running theirs beyond the program. www.niemanlab.org/2025/08/loca...

Quite the line in this excellent @niemanlab.org piece: "These stations are not just media outlets; they are cultural infrastructure." www.niemanlab.org/2025/08/how-...

Yomiuri Shimbun, Japan’s largest newspaper by circulation, has sued Perplexity for copyright infringement. The filing claims that Perplexity accessed 119,467 articles on Yomiuri’s site between February and June of this year. www.niemanlab.org/2025/08/japa...

In a July arbitration hearing, Politico's top editors testified that two recent AI experiments don't need to meet journalistic editorial standards. Union members alleged those experiments violated AI guidelines in their contract. My latest @niemanlab.org. www.niemanlab.org/2025/08/poli...

A new study by Muck Rack recorded over 1 million citations output by major generative AI models. Journalistic content was cited in 27% of responses, a number that jumped to 49% when those responses required "a level of recency." www.niemanlab.org/2025/07/gene...

In January, I uncovered a network of AI-generated newsletters, called Good Daily, that was targeting hundreds of small towns and cities across the U.S. This week, the newsletter company 6AM City announced it had bought Good Daily and brought its founder on board. www.niemanlab.org/2025/07/good...

If you are involved in trying to make nonprofit news sustainable, I wrote and reported this story for you! So much news that deserves our attention right now, but I hope you'll spend some time with my Houston Landing retrospective for @niemanlab.org (1/3) www.niemanlab.org/2025/07/what...

Today, Dow Jones launched a French version of its newswire using custom-built machine translation. It's part of a larger push to bring "real-time," AI-powered translations to the newswire, including services in Korean and Japanese. My latest for @niemanlab.org. www.niemanlab.org/2025/07/a-pr...

A New report maps a “severe” shortage of local journalists in the U.S.: www.niemanlab.org/2025/07/new-... I looked at the details for @niemanlab.org The report "finds that more than 1,000 counties — one out of three in the nation — do not have the equivalent of even one full-time local journalist."

Law360 is requiring all stories pass through an AI "bias indicator" before publication. The new policy came weeks after an executive from its parent company, LexisNexis, accused the newsroom of liberal bias in its Trump admin coverage. My latest for @niemanlab.org www.niemanlab.org/2025/07/law3...

A new policy at Law360, the legal news service owned by LexisNexis, requires that every story pass through an AI-powered “bias” detection tool before publication. www.niemanlab.org/2025/07/law3...

On Tuesday, Cloudflare became the first major internet infrastructure company to block AI scraping by default. www.niemanlab.org/2025/07/clou...

A woman who grew up in the US & China knew firsthand that journalism and narratives helped “readers in both cultures to better understand one another.” She now honors her mother and great grandfather with a fellowship for journalists from China,Taiwan and Hong Kong nieman.harvard.edu/liang-zhou-n...

"It is critical to not let journalism be chewed up and spit out by technologies yet again." A year into its OpenAI litigation, CIR is one of the only journalism nonprofits to take an AI company to court. I asked CEO @monikab.bsky.social and the CIR legal team why. www.niemanlab.org/2025/06/what...

“It is critical to not let journalism be chewed up and spit out by technologies yet again,” @monikab.bsky.social‬ said. “This is not something that has a ten- or even five-year time horizon. This needs to be addressed now.” www.niemanlab.org/2025/06/what...

“Summaries aren’t a replacement for journalism: they can’t exist without it.” www.niemanlab.org/2025/06/lets...

"I don’t want to just be entering text prompts for the rest of my life." I spoke to political cartoonists, including Pulitzer-winner Mark Fiore, about how they are using AI image generators in their work. My latest for @niemanlab.org. www.niemanlab.org/2025/06/i-do...

In safety tests, Anthropic’s new AI model tried to leak information to whistleblower tip lines and media outlets like ProPublica. www.niemanlab.org/2025/05/anth...

One Pulitzer Prize winner (and three finalists) disclosed using AI to this year's judging committee. I spoke to the reporters behind those stories about how they leaned on AI tools in their investigations. My latest for @niemanlab.org. www.niemanlab.org/2025/05/how-...

SCOOP: Politico's newsroom will show down with bosses in a first-of-its-kind battle over AI www.wired.com/story/politi...

We at the Tow Center have a major report out on AI in the newsroom - (absent any funding influence from the providers or users of the technology). ‘Journalism Zero’ is not too much of a stretch from the abstraction created by LLMs summary from @niemanlab.org www.niemanlab.org/2025/05/were...

After months of reporting and research, I’m really excited and proud to publish this series on AI and energy. It’s a deep look at AI’s energy requirements, where that energy mix comes from, and its carbon debt. www.technologyreview.com/supertopic/a...

The (very valid) reactions to this tweet are *exactly* what newsrooms fear when their owners dabble in AI-generated content without editorial input or approval. Local journalists work hard to build trust with readers, sources, and local communities. Fake books in third-party inserts don't help.

"All of this is part of the Trump administration’s larger war on measurement, which is itself a symptom of (and contributor to) a sense of the world becoming increasingly hard to comprehend." www.niemanlab.org/2025/05/how-...

Business Insider wants more of its employees to use ChatGPT, and for them to use it more often. In an all-hands, leadership named the top 10 ChatGPT users on staff to encourage adoption. BI told me nearly 70% of employees are already using ChatGPT "regularly." www.niemanlab.org/2025/05/busi...

SCOOP: On Friday, the US Copyright Office released a blockbuster report on AI training. On Saturday, the USCO director was unceremoniously fired. Today, two men claiming to be Trump appointees—including a new acting USCO director—showed up at the office: www.wired.com/story/us-cop...

Scoop: Trump appointed snr state dept official sought stafff's internal comms w/ journalists, European officials, + critics of Trump for a “Twitter files”-style dump to try + prove that the State Dept's Global Engagement Center censored conservatives. www.technologyreview.com/2025/05/01/1...

I was at the Nordic AI in Media Summit in Copenhagen last week and across the board speakers called for "radical" changes to news formats and distribution models. "The article will die, should die, but storytelling will not,” said Gard Steiro, the EIC of VG. www.niemanlab.org/2025/05/nord...

I went to SEJ last week and the vibes were…kinda weird! I wrote about it for @niemanlab.org: www.niemanlab.org/2025/04/a-co...

Tomorrow's Publisher looks like a news site about the future of journalism. A closer look reveals it's a showcase for a new "AI wire service" called NoahWire. I spoke to the site's founders about the ethics of using AI to repurpose and republish original reporting. www.niemanlab.org/2025/04/tomo...

SOURCE REQUEST 🚨 I'm working on a @niemanlab.org story about what’s come of media companies' 2020 DEI promises. How have newsrooms' DEI priorities changed over the last 5 years? What impact have DEI initiatives had on journalism/journalists? DM me here, on Signal, or email ([email protected]).

I'm working on a story about what’s come of media companies' 2020 DEI promises: Do you know of newsrooms that have or have not followed through on them? Send me a tip via email ([email protected]) or on Signal (@hanaatameez.01): signal.me#eu/SQFmfpneR... Please RT for reach!

Last month, Patch announced it was publishing AI-generated local newsletters in 30,000 communities across the U.S. I spoke to former Patch workers about the precursor to its AI program and the decision to leave human newsletter writers across the country behind. www.niemanlab.org/2025/04/the-...

the @niemanlab.org newsletter going out a little late today but it's worth it