'Move with the world' How oldest newspaper is using AI

 On 7 October 1779 a letter appeared in Berrow's Worcester Journal. A disgruntled reader wrote:

- Alexandra Topping

"I take the liberty of informing you and the public that the account of a melancholy accident happening to a poor man at Evesham which was inserted in your last paper is utterly devoid of foundation." 

Reports of a man falling in a vat of boiling ale were, it turned out, greatly exaggerated, published on the back of an anonymous tip.

Now the journal, which claims to be the oldest surviving newspaper in the world, says it has a cutting-edge way to help reporters get out of the office and check the facts artificial intelligence.

First published in 1690 and now a freesheet containing content from the Worcester News, it is one of several publications housed by Newsquest, the UK's second biggest regional news publisher, to hire "Al-assisted" journalists to report on local news.

Newsquest, which publishes more than 200 titles including the Glasgow Herald, the Brighton and Hove Argus, and the Lancashire Telegraph, has hired eight such reporters in the past year.

The AI reporters use an in-house copywriting tool based on Chat GPT, which draws on information gleaned from text on the internet. Reporters input the necessary "trusted content" - such as local planning committee minutes which it turns into concise news reports in the publisher's style. With the AI-assisted reporter churning out bread-and-butter content, other reporters are freed up to go to court or meet a councillor, said the Worcester News editor, Stephanie Preece.

She said: "AI can't be at the scene of a crash, in court, in a council meeting, it can't visit a grieving family or look somebody in the eye and tell that they're lying. All it does is free up the reporters to do more of that. Instead of shying away from it we are saying Al's here to stay so how can we harness it?"