Artificial intelligence is reshaping journalism at a pace that demands caution and celerity in determining how it should be used. 

Among the considerations, Canadian newsrooms must weigh the benefits of using AI-powered news gathering and content creation against the risks to accuracy, ethical considerations, and further eroding the trust of audiences.

AI delivers automation that can boost productivity through transcription, data analysis, and even story generation. 

In an industry afflicted by an exodus of paid subscribers and a loss in advertising revenue, many newsrooms may be tempted to look to AI as a replacement for reporters, editors and producers who write, edit and produce the news we consume now.  

News organizations must resist the temptation.

The Reuters Institute’s 2025 Digital News Report paints a sobering picture: trust in traditional media is waning, digital subscriptions are stagnating, and audiences are increasingly turning to social media and influencers for news. 

AI-powered platforms are accelerating this shift, offering summaries and synthetic content that can divert traffic from publishers and muddy the waters of public discourse.

Furthermore, according to a recent report by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, most Canadians are in a state of constant news deprivation and 2.5M Canadians have almost no local news.

Can AI help fill these gaps? Possibly. There’s a glimmer of hope with a rise in independent digital outlets and a growing appetite for community-driven journalism. 

But the audience must come first. Media outlets that ‘touch the grass’ by building relationships with people in the community and publishing news that serves the local public interest could restore trust in journalism at the grass roots level. T

Ethical guidelines must guide every deployment of AI in the newsrooms.

There are pitfalls to relying on AI, especially large language models that are vulnerable to creating false content, or “hallucinations.” Artificial General Intelligence models could be manipulated by bad actors to skew results. 

AI must never replace the journalist’s judgment, especially in matters of accountability and evidence-based truth-telling.

News is a deadline business. The word deadline itself dates back to the American Civil War and referred to a boundary line around military prisons, beyond which prisoners were shot. It was adopted by the press to put a time boundary on the assignment at hand.

AI is reshaping that boundary at breakneck speed. Newsrooms must judiciously apply ethics and accountability to their “do-not-cross” line, or the outcome will be fatal.

As we stand at this crossroads, Canadian journalists, policymakers, and audiences must ask: What kind of press do we want in an AI-driven world? The answer will shape not just our modern media landscape, but our democracy itself.