A Late-Night Chat with Gemini
One night in early 2025, I was riding my motorcycle home from work at around 1 a.m. To kill the boredom of taking the exact same route, I put on my earphones and opened Gemini, Google's artificial intelligence app.
Amidst the hustle and bustle of the streets, I chatted with "Ms. Gemini" for almost an hour—I call her "Ms." because she has a female voice. Our conversation was a mixed bag, ranging from heavy topics like the Big Bang theory and politics to figuring out how to deal with a grumpy wife. The noise of blaring horns and the strong night wind didn't interrupt our chat.
Ms. Gemini perfectly grasped my questions and gave incredibly unique answers. She even had me chuckling a few times, like when she suggested I slip a love letter on the table if I was too shy to say romantic things to my wife in person. It felt incredibly personal!
The Reality of the AI Era
This is where we are today: the era of Artificial Intelligence (AI). It is an era where everything is made easier with a simple command, keyword, or prompt. The world of journalism—my profession for the past 19 years—is no exception.
Brutal market pressures, fierce competition, and constant uncertainty have pushed mass media to adopt AI. As a result, media outlets have been racing to use it to speed up news production ever since ChatGPT launched in November 2022, followed by a surge of other AI variants.
The Rise of the Newsbots
Amidst this shift, concerns about the accuracy of AI-generated information have sparked lengthy debates. The line between journalistic work created entirely by AI and that written by human journalists is blurring. There are even systematic efforts to "replace" journalists through websites that exclusively churn out AI-generated news.
This was proven by NewsGuard’s Rise of the Newsbots report, which found 49 multilingual websites producing hundreds of news articles daily using purely AI. These sites, which hide their owners or authors, were also caught producing massive amounts of hoax content (McKenzie Sadeghi and Lorenzo Arvanitis, May 1, 2023, newsguardtech.com).
What the Public Wants vs. Media Reality
The global public is highly aware of this situation. Recent data shows a strong demand for transparency:
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The Demand for Disclosure: A survey of 6,000 respondents (July–August 2024) revealed that 93.8% want journalists to disclose their use of AI in news content (Lynn Walsh, Sept 25, 2024, trustingnews.org).
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Public Skepticism: The Reuters Institute’s Digital News Report 2024 noted that the public is heavily skeptical of AI-produced news due to its vulnerability to biased, inaccurate, or false information (Amy Ross Arguedas, June 17, 2024, Reuters Institute).
International media outlets are actively responding to this anxiety. The New York Times, a nearly two-century-old publication, released explicit guidelines on how they use AI. They firmly stated they do not use AI to write articles, ensuring that human journalists take full responsibility for the news they publish.
The Transparency Gap in Indonesia
Meanwhile, in Indonesia, mass media has yet to be fully transparent with the public about how AI is used in their news production.
Interestingly, AI usage in the Indonesian media predates the ChatGPT boom, tracing back to 2017 (Masriadi and Bahri, Sept 2, 2024, Jurnal Sosiologi Dialektika Sosial). This means journalistic products with a touch of AI "interference" might already be flooding our daily feeds.
Take, for instance, the countless tutorial or "tips and tricks" articles found on online media today that completely lack actual interviews. The question arises: Is this the result of actual journalistic research, or is it entirely an AI product?
There is zero explanation available to the reader. This type of content can be highly misleading if it isn't based on in-depth research or verified by competent experts in the field.
A Call for Journalistic Conscience
Currently, the Indonesian Press Council is working on guidelines for the use of artificial intelligence in journalistic work. However, the most crucial step is for the media industry to push its journalists to honestly disclose AI usage right from the production phase in the newsroom.
This transparency is essential to foster greater AI awareness among the public. As noted in the 2024 Reuters Institute report, global AI awareness is still uneven. Knowing when AI is used in journalism is vital to stimulate public critical thinking and to maintain the quality of journalism itself.
As we all know, the media industry today is in a critical state—battered by the onslaught of social media, "homeless media," and low-quality information. By presenting information honestly, we can hope to rebuild public trust.
As Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel wrote in The Elements of Journalism, journalists must listen to their conscience; they must have ethics and a sense of responsibility to the public, including in how they use AI.
But to test your own AI awareness, here is a question for you: Was this opinion piece written by AI or not?
Tri Suharman
Media Practitioner and Ph.D. Student in Communication Science, Mercu Buana University, Jakarta
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