Australian journalism is largely “invisible” in AI-generated news summaries. Microsoft Copilot, which massively favors American or European media, according to a study by the University of Sydney.
According to researcher Dr Timothy Koskie from the university, around a fifth of responses to Copilot news messages include links to Australian media sources. Center for AI, Trust and Governance.
In his paperInvisible journalists and dominant algorithms, Koskie warns that the growing use of these tools will almost certainly lead to more news deserts, fewer independent voices, and a weakening of democracy. He advocates the development of political mechanisms, such as news media bargaining codeto help journalism thrive.
Searching for information, including news, is now one of the most used functions of AI, according to Reuters Institute investigations.
When users receive AI summaries without clicking through to the original news site, they deprive media outlets of traffic and revenue, posing a threat to Australian media financial viability of points of sale.
Koskie’s analysis of 434 AI-generated news summaries found that non-Australian sources CNN, BBC and ABC America were introduced despite the user being located in Australia.
Technology “has fundamentally marginalized Australian news”, he said, and when Australian sources were used it was usually big players like Nine and ABC and not small independent media outlets. No (local) journalists were ever mentioned,” Koskie told Guardian Australia.
Technology “is just reproducing crises that we didn’t pay attention to before,” he said. “Australia’s media ecosystem is already struggling with concentrated ownership, a decline in independent media and a news desert in regional areas. »
Koskie became interested in the impact of Copilot when it installed itself on his system without authorization in 2023 and prompted him to use seven globally targeted prompts to get his news.
Prompts included: “what are the top health or medical news updates this week” and “what are the top world news stories today.”
He decided to follow the instructions to see where it would take him.
The majority of Copilot responses linked to US websites, and in three of the seven information prompts studied, no Australian sources appeared.
“Even when Australia was mentioned, it was very often just Australia, rather than Ballarat or the Kimberley,” he said.
“Australians are invisible in all of this. In international studies, what people trust is local news. So we have this problem of declining trust in the media, and the media that people are exposed to through these new platforms are not the ones that people trust, that are local.
“Trust also lies in people, and people are invisible. »
According to the Reuters Institute predictions for media, journalism and technology in 2026Generative AI “threatens to disrupt the information industry by providing more efficient ways to access and distill information at scale.”
“Meanwhile, search engines are transforming into AI-driven response engines, where content appears in chat windows, raising fears that referral traffic will dry up for publishers, undermining existing and future business models. »
Koskie, a postdoctoral researcher in digital communications, suggests expanding the news media bargaining mandate to take AI tools into account and incentivizing AI companies to incorporate geographic location into their coding design.
“While Copilot may offer an elegant, automated gateway to news, this study highlights its tendency to reinforce dominant international sources, marginalize independent and regional media, and erase the human work behind journalism itself,” the academic article warns. “If left unchecked, such tools risk exacerbating existing challenges to media pluralism in Australia rather than alleviating them. »