{"id":527005,"date":"2026-03-10T14:58:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-10T14:58:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/527005\/"},"modified":"2026-03-10T14:58:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-10T14:58:08","slug":"from-scripts-to-sermons-is-ai-going-to-be-writing-everything-soon-margaret-sullivan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/527005\/","title":{"rendered":"From scripts to sermons: is AI going to be writing everything soon? | Margaret Sullivan"},"content":{"rendered":"

No one wants a soulless sermon \u2013 that defeats the purpose \u2013 and Pope Leo XIV<\/a> has taken steps to ensure that Roman Catholic priests don\u2019t deliver one.<\/p>\n

Artificial intelligence, the new pontiff said in a recent meeting with clergy, \u201cwill never be able to share faith\u201d, which is what giving a homily is all about. Resist the temptation and write your own words, he urged.<\/p>\n

But that point of view is increasingly on the margins.<\/p>\n

Not every workplace is a pulpit, and AI is an unstoppable force in almost every field.<\/p>\n

That doesn\u2019t mean there\u2019s general agreement on how to use it and what the guidelines and guard rails should be.<\/p>\n

As battles over AI rage in places as far-flung as Hollywood and the Pentagon, there plenty of high emotion, but nothing like consensus.<\/p>\n

In perhaps the most high-stakes battle, AI company Anthropic is fencing with the Pentagon<\/a> about key restrictions on AI use by the military. Huge contract with the defense department are at stake, as is national security, and there is competitive pressure from another major company, OpenAI.<\/p>\n

Hollywood writers\u2019 unions are trying to hold back the tide that threatens their members\u2019 livelihoods.<\/p>\n

And in my own field, journalism, AI is a hot topic.<\/p>\n

A few weeks ago, Cleveland Plain Dealer editor Chris Quinn took US journalism schools to task for, as he sees it, not sufficiently preparing students to enter an industry where AI is becoming part of the normal workflow. In his shop, he says, AI is increasingly used to draft stories from reporters\u2019 notes, thus freeing reporters to do crucial shoe-leather work. The stories are then reviewed by an editor before publication.<\/p>\n

The fracas in Cleveland began when a candidate for a reporting fellowship withdrew her application after learning that she\u2019d be expected, in some instances, to file her notes to an AI reporting tool rather than write stories herself. That wasn\u2019t what she had in mind when she decided to become a journalist, so she backed out.<\/p>\n

\u201cArtificial intelligence is not bad for newsrooms,\u201d Quinn wrote in one of his regular letters to readers, using that incident as a jumping off point. \u201cIt\u2019s the future of them \u2026Anyone entering this field should be immersing themselves in AI.\u201d<\/p>\n

The letter drew fire<\/a> from working journalists such as Phil Lewis, a Huffington Post editor who wrote on Twitter\/X: \u201cAn editor for a newspaper encouraging \u2018removing writing from reporters\u2019 workflow\u2019 should just resign.\u201d<\/p>\n

double quotation markStandards-and-practices editors were thoughtfully putting out guidelines to journalists only to find that the technology was outpacing their rulemaking<\/p>\n

The boss at Axel Springer, Mathias Do\u0308pfner, delivered a similar message to the staff of his international company, which includes the US-based Business Insider and Politico.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe truth is, you either embrace AI or you die,\u201d was his blunt directive according to the media newsletter Status, which obtained a recording of his meeting with staff.<\/p>\n

\u201cDoes it replace jobs here and there? The honest answer is, yes, no doubt about it.\u201d But, Dopfner added, its overall effect will be to preserve thousands of other jobs because of a strengthened business model. Small comfort if your job is on the line now. Status reported that AI-bashing signs reading \u201cNo slop in our shop\u201d dotted the meeting.<\/p>\n

At Columbia University\u2019s journalism school, a research fellow and I explored the question of<\/a> how America\u2019s newsrooms were responding to AI.<\/p>\n

Trying to determine that was like nailing jello to a wall, because the practices \u2013 and the thinking about them \u2013 were changing at such a rapid pace.<\/p>\n

Standards-and-practices editors were thoughtfully putting out guidelines to journalists only to find that the technology was outpacing their rulemaking. Publishers and business-side people may have one idea, and old-school journalists quite another.<\/p>\n

But there\u2019s no denying the impact of AI or its omnipresence.<\/p>\n

\u201cResistance is futile,\u201d one AI product manager for the Associated Press<\/a> wrote in internal messages to colleagues, according to a Semafor story titled \u201cIt\u2019s bots v reporters at the AP.\u201d She also reportedly observed that many editors would \u201cprefer an AI-written article to a human written one\u201d.<\/p>\n

The one strong suggestion my colleague and I made \u2013 foundational for many organizations using AI, not just newsrooms \u2013 is to make sure that there are \u201chumans in the loop\u201d. Maybe AI can create a news story, but the reporter who gathered the facts \u2013 and her editor \u2013 need to check it and review it before it goes out to the public.<\/p>\n

But, of course, that\u2019s not a given. There are AI-related gaffes and misuses aplenty, as we detailed in a story for Columbia Journalism Review.<\/p>\n

The website Indicator reported that a podcast network called Daily News Now had churned out an average of 11,000 podcast episodes a day using AI. In many cases, these mass-produced podcasts<\/a> were ripping off and failing to credit the original reporting done by local news organizations.<\/p>\n

Yet we also know that AI has been used to great effect by the best journalists to provide the basis of groundbreaking journalism<\/a>, like an AP investigation that produced a database of people killed by police officers supposedly using \u201cless lethal force\u201d.<\/p>\n

Maybe the best lesson at this still-early stage is that AI is potentially a great tool \u2013 and certainly a great danger.<\/p>\n

Use it wisely. Or, if you\u2019re a Catholic priest on deadline for Sunday\u2019s sermon, perhaps not at all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"No one wants a soulless sermon \u2013 that defeats the purpose \u2013 and Pope Leo XIV has taken…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":527006,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[62,276,277,49,48,61],"class_list":{"0":"post-527005","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-ca","12":"tag-canada","13":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/527005","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=527005"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/527005\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/527006"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=527005"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=527005"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=527005"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}