Echoes of Automation: The Increasing Use of LLMs in Newsmaking

TL;DR

This study analyzes over 40,000 news articles to assess the increasing use of LLMs in journalism, revealing trends, linguistic impacts, and the prevalence of AI-generated content across various media types.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive empirical analysis of AI-generated news content, highlighting usage patterns, linguistic effects, and the growing role of LLMs in journalism.

Findings

Substantial increase in GenAI use in recent years, especially in local and college news.

LLMs are frequently used in news introductions, with manual writing in conclusions.

GenAI enhances word richness and readability but reduces formality, leading to more uniform styles.

Abstract

The rapid rise of Generative AI (GenAI), particularly LLMs, poses concerns for journalistic integrity and authorship. This study examines AI-generated content across over 40,000 news articles from major, local, and college news media, in various media formats. Using three advanced AI-text detectors (e.g., Binoculars, Fast-Detect GPT, and GPTZero), we find substantial increase of GenAI use in recent years, especially in local and college news. Sentence-level analysis reveals LLMs are often used in the introduction of news, while conclusions usually written manually. Linguistic analysis shows GenAI boosts word richness and readability but lowers formality, leading to more uniform writing styles, particularly in local media.