Keyword – generative AI

Bayer, Judit:

Who Speaks When AI Writes?

The rapid integration of generative artificial intelligence into the media ecosystem marks a structural transformation of public communication. What began as algorithmic assistance in data-driven reporting—sports, finance, weather—has evolved into systems capable of producing persuasive, human-like text, images and audiovisual content across virtually any domain. This paper situates generative AI (GenAI) within the legal and ethical architecture of journalism, highlighting that the technology destabilises foundational assumptions about authorship, accountability and the nature of expression itself. The paper relies on a graduated model of AI involvement, distinguishing between assistive, transformative and fully generative uses. This spectrum is not merely descriptive but also normative, as legal responsibility and ethical expectations intensify with the degree of machine autonomy. Particularly in fully generative contexts, questions of liability, copyright and editorial accountability become acute. The apparent autonomy of AI, however, remains partly illusory: human input persists at every stage, from training via prompting to editorial oversight. The analysis identifies three interrelated areas of ethical challenge. The first is connected to journalistic ethics and consist of three elements: transparency that aims to preserve trust and accountability both in terms of training data and output disclosure; the journalistic standard of accuracy is systematically challenged by the heightened risk of misinformation, hallucinations and unverifiable sources, raising the duty of verification to a whole new level. The second area of ethical concern is bias and discrimination that persist within and get extrapolated by generative systems, reflecting structural inequalities embedded in training data. Finally, labour implications raise concerns about the displacement of journalists and the erosion of professional autonomy.

Keywords: AI Act, ChatGPT, generative AI, journalism, media