Last week, I had the chance to visit the Media Innovation Center at West Virginia University and attend an eye-opening presentation about artificial intelligence (AI) in news reporting.
Today, AI is everywhere. Just about every new device or app boasts some form of AI feature. We now see AI-generated news stories, images, videos, and even podcasts.
But what exactly is AI? The term has become so broad that it often means different things to different people. Some tools marketed as AI are barely more than advanced algorithms. In many ways, “AI” has become as much a buzzword as a real technology.
Depending on who you ask, AI might bring to mind visions of the fictional Skynet from The Terminator or the emotional robots of Spielberg’s A.I. Artificial Intelligence. Others see it as an economic driver, powering the rise of giant data centers that consume huge amounts of electricity — something West Virginia recently encouraged by passing new laws to promote these facilities, though not without controversy.
I’ve never been a technology skeptic. I was one of West Virginia’s earliest bloggers, even before the word “blog” was common. I jumped onto Gmail, Facebook, and Twitter (now X) early on, and I’ve been livestreaming press conferences long before it became the norm.
Today, I depend on technology daily — using my iPhone to snap photos, record interviews, and take notes. During legislative sessions, it’s typical for me to have multiple devices recording meetings while I chase down interviews.
Despite my early tech adoption, I’ve been cautious about fully embracing AI in my reporting. I use AI-driven tools for transcription and research, but I’ve seen the risks of overreliance. Some newsrooms use AI to write articles or create images without disclaimers — a practice that has led to embarrassing mistakes like AI hallucinations, where programs invent facts or quotes.
When my friend Ashton Marra — a former West Virginia Public Broadcasting reporter and now a professor at WVU’s Reed College of Media — told me her students were studying AI’s role in journalism, I was skeptical. But she encouraged me to withhold judgment until I saw their work.
The students in her Experimental Journalism class conducted a series of AI experiments, focusing on the 2025 legislative session. They explored six key questions: Can AI generate a story from a speech?
Can it mimic a journalist’s style? Can it handle politically charged debates? Can it summarize complex legislation? Can it adapt messaging for different audiences? Can it speed up the reporting process?
The results were mixed. AI proved helpful for analyzing information, summarizing committee meetings, and drafting story frameworks. However, its accuracy depended heavily on the quality and amount of information provided. Too much input confused the AI. It could mimic writing styles, but it couldn’t replace real journalists. AI also showed signs of political bias depending on the data it received.
Ultimately, AI still needs human reporters to fact-check, provide context, and craft compelling stories. A seasoned journalist will always write a better article than AI alone.
The WVU students produced an impressive presentation with smart recommendations for how reporters and newsrooms can responsibly use AI. They even used work from real statehouse reporters — including myself — to test whether AI could replicate our writing styles or create issue-focused newsletters.
At the same time, I was using an AI tool myself: Google’s NotebookLM. I used it to quickly summarize introduced bills, amendments, and committee substitutes during the legislative session.
It helped me create briefing documents, spot updates in legislation, and highlight key arguments from committee debates. However, I never relied solely on AI. I still read every bill, listened to debates, checked the state code, and applied my years of experience to my reporting.
AI is simply another tool — like a camera, a recorder, or a laptop. It’s not something to fear, but something to use carefully and wisely. I’m grateful that young journalists at WVU are already thinking deeply about these issues and helping guide the future of responsible news reporting.
