Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) Managing Director David Anderson has confirmed the public broadcaster will not be replacing its journalists with AI.
During a budget estimate hearing on May 30, members of the Environment and Communications Legislation Committee raised concerns about the rapid adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) among some media outlets and its impact on the quality of journalism.
In response, Mr. Anderson said the ABC had no plan to let AI take over.
“There is no way we would let AI replace what we have as the craft of journalism–that is independent public journalism. That’s important for the ABC,” he said.
“What we have looked at AI to do is a tool with regard to researching.
“We’ve looked at it with regard to language conversion for the Australian public. We’ve looked at that element.”
The director also said the ABC had not struck a deal with any AI service provider as it was concerned about the ethics of using open-source AI.
“We haven’t done a deal, but there are some ethics involved with this that you can then go into quite a broad spectrum of what the content that you look at is,” he said.
In addition, Mr. Anderson noted that the ABC had a committee dedicated to looking at the impact of AI on the media and the public broadcaster itself, with the participation of experts from the fields of technology, legal, and the like.
ABC’s Guidance on the Use of AI
The broadcaster also had its own guidance on the use of AI in its content, Mr. Anderson added.“We are not using AI in our content at the moment. We are following what would be a disclosure principle: if AI was to be used, we would disclose that to the audience,” he said.
Nevertheless, the director admitted that AI was a fast-moving area and that the ABC was struggling to keep pace with the changes.
He then said the broadcaster would continue to update its principles and remain transparent about what it was doing with the Australian audience.
The company is trying to save $65 million (US$43 million) in operating costs in response to a significant drop in advertising revenue.
Amid the reform to remain profitable, News Corp has hinted at expanding the use of AI-produced content to save costs.
Impact of Meta Ending News Contract
At the same time, Mr. Anderson talked about the impacts of Meta ending news contracts with the broadcaster in December 2024.Following the introduction of the News Media Bargaining Code in 2021, social media giants Google and Meta entered into commercial deals with local news organisations for publishing the Australian content they produced.
The government estimated that Australian media companies had received up to $200 million (US$130 million) from the deals so far.
While Mr. Anderson could not disclose the amount the public broadcaster received citing confidentiality, he said the ABC invested in over 60 journalists in regional, rural and remote Australia with the funding it received.
The director said the investment was necessary due to the shutdown of media outlets in many regional areas.
“Our presence in regional Australia is incredibly important, especially coming up to summer and bushfire season,” he said.
Going forward, Mr. Anderson admitted that the broadcaster now had a financial problem.
“It is a double negative, not insignificant amount of money that disappears from what is additional revenue that we’ve got coming into the ABC. And it is of concern,” he said.
“We’ve got time to prepare ourselves for this, and no decision has been made about how we approach it.”
