At the NUJ 2025 delegate meeting in Blackpool, members voted unanimously to support a South Wales branch motion instructing the National Executive Committee (NEC) and the Ethics Council to create guidelines on the use of artificial intelligence.
Is AI a threat to employees?
Concerns are mounting among union members that some employers see AI as a means of cutting the workforce and replacing content written by journalists with material that’s generated artificially.
Delegates were told how reporters working for Britain’s biggest news publisher Reach plc were routinely expected to put three stories a day through an AI tool known as Guten. The stories have already appeared on other Reach websites and are repurposed because they have attracted high numbers of page views in their original form. By using Guten to rewrite the material, the intention is to avoid an algorithm downgrade that is applied when material is recycled from other locations.
Using Guten three times a day to outsmart algorithms has become an added requirement on top of the standard requirement on Reach reporters to file five conventional stories per day.
Ethical questions around AI
Seconding the motion, Simon Barrow from the Ethics Council stated: “There is a whole range of ethical issues that come into AI. Central to it is the danger of the loss of human control, critical thinking and accountability. There’s the danger of perpetuating mistakes through databases – what are called hallucinations in the trade, which just means basically false information.”
“A lot of AI algorithms are what are called black boxes, which means that you don’t actually know what the data is going into it nor do you know how it’s used or manipulated and so on. So there’s a whole issue of transparency there. And then, of course, there are copyright and intellectual property concerns.”
“There are privacy and data security concerns. There are issues about existing or non-existing regulatory frameworks and so on. We hope that as an Ethics Council we can work with the NEC and others in the union to produce some guidelines which are realistic on the use of AI and take into account the pressures and intensity of working in a newsroom.”
Journalism’s human skills against the power of AI
NUJ national organiser, Huda Elmi, argued:
“Artificial intelligence is the greatest challenge of our time with the work that we do, and our union must rise to the occasion or risk being sidelined as our sector rapidly transforms. Let us be clear. AI journalism cannot replace the talent, creativity, or skillsets held by our members in all sectors that we represent.”
“The demand in this motion for the NEC to produce guidance for chapels will be vital in giving our members the tools to fight back against the abuses being run out in their workplaces. Each one of us knows or has experienced the threats and exploitation we face because of AI. We have seen the reports of inaccurate data that is routinely used to inform AI generated stories or how AI stories are being falsely attributed to journalists or how creators are having their likeness stolen without their knowledge or consent.
“AI is a poor imitation of our members’ work at best. At worst, it is a threat to journalistic quality and integrity and a blunt tool that management will use to slash jobs and conditions.”
The fight for journalism: why newsrooms are in crisis
Huda Elmi also said: “Our members urgently need information and guidance on the ground to fight back against the destructive expansion of AI in their workplaces.”
In a wider context, the negative use of AI that already happening is a symptom of the degradation of newsrooms that has created an existential crisis for many news outlets.
For management, AI is a further tool to sustain a failing business model reliant on ever more page views produced by a diminishing number of writers. The revenue for news websites comes from the fractions of a penny per page view derived from what is known as programmatic advertising.
Unrealistic monthly page view targets are imposed on reporters, who face immense pressure to deliver, often at great cost to their mental health. This is particularly true in firms where union membership is low, and individuals feel isolated. Sadly – and dangerously for our democracy – it is leading increasingly to situations where reporters are abandoning long-held ambitions to be a journalist and going off to pursue entirely different careers.
A version of this article was first published in Media North: Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom (North). For more from Media North, and to subscribe to their newsletter, visit their website.
