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The news industry has always had a competitive element to it. And that’s a good thing.
But how does any newsroom compete with artificial-intelligence-fuelled plagiarism machines that hoover up journalism that took hours or days to produce — then spit it out as their own?
I’m asking that question tonight because of a new “player” in the local news ecosystem delivering coverage of “everything happening in Winnipeg, with fast-focused updates.”
The podcast, under the umbrella of The Daily News Now!, features “Corey with the Story” offering a conversational rip-and-read of much of what our newsroom has produced, without even a cursory nod to anything approximating attribution.
A quick perusal of Corey’s stories this week shows the breadth of what’s been fodder for his podcast, from our scoop on a rail-relocation update to Maggie Macintosh’s feature on Gonzaga graduates to Ken Wiebe’s look at the flooding that has closed the Gilbert Plains Country Club. Even a column from Tom Brodbeck is repurposed as one of Corey’s stories.
I’d like to think that anyone who found themselves listening to Corey’s stories would recognize the risks of trusting what he calls “AI-powered news.” The telltale signs we shouldn’t rely too much on what Corey is telling us are abundant.
It starts with mangled pronunciations of local references — such as pronouncing the “Vital” in St. Vital like “vital signs,” rather than the way locals say the name of the neighbourhood (and its eponymous archbishop).
Then. There’s. A. Strange. Halting. Cadence. To. Corey’s. Delivery. Reminiscent. Of. William. Shatner’s. Captain. Kirk.
But even if you can get past those markers, what are we to make of the artwork on every one of Corey’s episodes, which spells our city’s name “Winnipieg?”
Can you trust Winnipeg news from a source that can’t spell Winnipeg?
But here’s the thing: Corey isn’t just telling stories from Winnipieg, er, Winnipeg. He’s also telling stories from Amsterdam to Anchorage to Dayton to Dublin to Vancouver to Venice Beach as part of a global rip-and-read network in 300 cities around the world.
And in every one of those cities, the newsrooms paying to produce that journalism get none of the revenue or audience generated for Corey and Company.
The “global local news network” is pumping out AI-generated news on more than 700 topics.
And let’s not forget who else is part of this plundering play: Apple and Spotify, the podcast platforms distributing Corey’s stories.
In the wacky world increasingly governed by tech tycoons, we are now at the point where Meta is blocking news from Canadian newsrooms on its Facebook and Instagram platforms, while podcast platforms are enabling the spread of what artificial intelligence has strip-mined from those same newsrooms.
That’s a story I’m sure Corey will never tell.
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