Chaos and Credibility: A Snapshot of How AI Is Impacting Press Freedom and Investigative Journalism

World Press Freedom Day marks 32 years since the UN General Assembly first proclaimed the day 32 years ago .

Reporters Without Borders’ recently released World Press freedom Index found that the global state of press freedom has reached an unprecedented low point.

AI , large language models, and predictive algorithms have appeared all across the media landscape.

This potentially breakthrough technology brings both promise and peril with it, however.

UN report: “Generative AI enables the creation of misleading content like deepfakes, undermining trust in democratic institutions” GIJN monitored AI election manipulation around the world last year as part of its year-long 2024 Elections project.

A Financial Times investigation last year similarly found that AI -generated voice-cloning tools had been used in the 2024 Democratic presidential primary (to falsely simulate then-President Joe Biden telling people not to vote) in the US .

Many watchdog reporters have adopted AI , LLMs as force multipliers in their newsrooms.

When deployed smartly with proper editorial controls, AI tools can prove especially useful for small independent and nonprofit media that lack the financial resources and staff of bigger news outlets.

GIJN spoke with several past graduates of our Digital Threats training course for insights on how they are employing AI .