Artificial Intelligence is here to stay, and it’s on track to change the world as we know it.
Since ChatGPT’s launch in November 2022, the world has been confronted by the reality of AI on a daily basis. The technology has remarkable potential, but it has come with a whole host of problems that societies were completely unprepared for. AI-generated videos now flood social media, job losses are imminent, and academic integrity looks to be at an all-time low.
Peoples’ feelings on Artificial Intelligence are mixed, ranging from tech optimists eagerly awaiting an AI-powered utopia, to those entirely rejecting AI out of fear it will bring about mankind’s extinction. Most of the population, however, lie somewhere between these extremes, not quite sure what to think.
The majority of journalists fall into this category of uncertainty. The question is, just how big of a role should AI have in the world of journalism?
To use or not to use
“There’s a lot of formulaic journalism that AI can just take and work on like fact checking and verification,” says Declan Varley, Group Editor of Galway Advertiser. “It’ll handle all the repetitive tasks like updates, weather reporting, sports scores.”
Mr Varley draws the line at the writing of articles though: “You could sit down and say, well, the whole skill of writing a story will disappear because ChatGPT can do it for you, but not really. I don’t see that being the case. I think ChatGPT-generated content has a lack of empathy and a lack of nuance about it.”
The Irish Independent’s Joseph Murray also sees potential for AI’s use as a tool in newsrooms, but believes it has its limits: “You still will always need a human eye to look at stuff, in terms of defamation or fact checking, which AI just doesn’t have the power to do if it wasn’t at the scene.”
Introducing AI into newsrooms while still prioritising the work of humans may seem to be the pragmatic approach. However, the National Union of Journalists (NUJ), pushes back on the idea that AI can be a positive tool for journalists.
“AI is widely marketed as a tool that can take care of menial tasks, freeing journalists to do more valuable and interesting work,” says NUJ Assistant General Secretary Séamus Dooley. “In reality, this is rarely the case. Instead we have seen the fast-paced introduction of AI in newsrooms do far more harm than good.”
An industry in decline
Ownership of news organisations goes a long way to determine how AI is adopted. Many Irish publications are no longer local-owned, instead controlled by foreign media conglomerates.
Reach, the largest commercial news publisher in the UK and Ireland, made over 320 employees redundant in September 2025. According to the NUJ, “the company is using artificial intelligence to attempt to plug gaps in coverage.”
Galway Advertiser is somewhat unique among outlets in the region in that its ownership group is Irish and its readership remains stable. As such, Mr Varley’s team may be in a position to protect its journalists from AI-induced layoffs, but this is not the norm across the country.
“As a result of the use of AI, I think we’re going to see more and more clickbait style articles, and we certainly will see a decline in the amount of journalism that costs money to produce,” says one West of Ireland journalist. “I’m not sure you can attribute that entirely to AI. That’s also to do with the general public’s lack of willingness to pay for journalism.”
As this journalist says, to fully grasp the scope of AI’s impact on journalism, it’s important to understand the recent history of the media industry. According to The New Yorker, what was once a highly profitable business has been struggling since the widespread adoption of the internet in the 1990s.
Newspaper sales and television ratings have continued to fall, and advertising revenue is following suit. This has triggered mass layoffs and sharp funding decreases. The pandemic then brought further economic uncertainty and led to deepening issues of public distrust in the media.
It was into this unstable landscape that AI arrived, viewed by some as a life raft, and by others as the final nail in the coffin.
“The only reason that owners of media organisations are using AI is to save money,” says the previously quoted journalist.
“If you were to consider why any major news outlet has started to bring AI into their newsrooms and use it as a way of generating content, the only reason for that is because it means they can have fewer people, and therefore have to pay fewer people, and therefore can make more money. The two are inextricably linked.”
“I wouldn’t be under any illusion that there’s any news outlet out there that’s using AI because they think it will make what they are producing better. It’s a sad state of affairs, but it’s the reality, and I guess the slippery slope that journalism has been on has all been about making media moguls more money. It’s never been about anything else unfortunately.”
AI in the fake news era
On top of the internal problems of the journalism industry, the proliferation of fraudulent content produced by AI threatens public trust for all content.
Recent years have seen numerous instances of AI-generated political disinformation going viral in Ireland. The day before the October 2025 presidential election, an AI video was circulated on social media of then-candidate Catherine Connolly announcing her withdrawal from the race. Hundreds of thousands interacted with the post; many of whom were unaware it was not genuine.
Even those who were able to discern the video’s lack of authenticity, however, are now less likely to trust factual information when presented with it, according to AI-detection platform Copyleaks.
Their November 2025 survey found that 82% of people have less confidence in media and institutions because of their interactions with AI-generated content, a problem which will only grow in severity as AI’s capabilities increase.
Regulating the future
For matters inside and outside the journalism industry, the utopian future promised by AI developers seems far away, as does comprehensive AI regulation.
“We’re still at the early stages of the potential benefits of [AI], but I don’t think we’re at such early stages in terms of the potential pitfalls of it,” says a Galway-based reporter. “But I still don’t know, do we know how we’re going to get to that point where we can have trust in it?”
“I think [the government] are very cognisant of it, but I think it’s evolving at a rate faster than they can get a handle on, and that’s probably going to continue.”
AI’s rapid development is a factor impeding AI legislation around the world, but the Irish government also have tech lobbyists and EU regulations to contend with.
The government is unlikely to endanger its relationship with the American tech companies headquartered here, and as evidenced by its response to Australia’s recent social media ban for children under 16, the government will probably await EU guidance before making any big legislative changes.
The EU AI Act, which prohibits certain AI uses, was passed in 2024. The act will only come into full effect in August 2026 though, so its impact is not yet certain. The NUJ has called for further regulations in labelling AI-generated content and protecting journalists voices in newsrooms, as well as the introduction of a windfall tax to ensure “that tech giants pay their fair share in the preservation of a sector that is vital to our democracy.”
Other ideas for regulation include Coimisiún na Meán, Ireland’s media regulator, restricting funding to media outlets who use AI in content production, or the government increasing investment in media literacy programmes.
Nothing certain but uncertainty
Predicting the future of Artificial Intelligence is futile. It is a technology with the power to fundamentally alter the trajectory of our species, let alone the journalism industry. How its development will progress over the coming years is unclear.
What is clear is that profit-seeking will underpin many of the crucial decisions ahead. The journalism industry, which never truly recovered from the advent of the internet, now sits on a knife’s edge, and there is no turning back.
“I don’t think anybody in any industry can say we’re just going to ignore this,” says the West of Ireland journalist. “That would be like going back to the mid-1990s and saying we’re going to ignore the internet.”
