{"id":255967,"date":"2026-01-24T21:32:08","date_gmt":"2026-01-24T21:32:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/255967\/"},"modified":"2026-01-24T21:32:08","modified_gmt":"2026-01-24T21:32:08","slug":"australian-journalism-sidelined-in-ai-generated-news-summaries-on-copilot-research-shows-australian-media","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/255967\/","title":{"rendered":"Australian journalism \u2018sidelined\u2019 in AI-generated news summaries on Copilot, research shows | Australian media"},"content":{"rendered":"

Australian journalism is largely \u201cinvisible\u201d in AI-generated news summaries from Microsoft<\/a> Copilot, which overwhelmingly favour US or European media, research by the University of Sydney has found.<\/p>\n

Roughly one-fifth of responses to Copilot news prompts feature links to Australian media sources, according to researcher Dr Timothy Koskie from the university\u2019s Centre for AI, Trust and Governance<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In his paper<\/a>, Invisible journalists and dominant algorithms, Koskie warns the increasing use of these tools will almost certainly lead to more news deserts, fewer independent voices and a weakened democracy. He urges the development of policy mechanisms, such as the news media bargaining code<\/a>, to help journalism thrive.<\/p>\n

Searching for information, including news, is now one of AI\u2019s most widely used functions, according to Reuters Institute surveys<\/a>.<\/p>\n

When users receive AI summaries without clicking through to the original news website, they starve news outlets of web traffic and revenue, posing a threat to Australian media<\/a> outlets\u2019 financial viability.<\/p>\n

Koskie\u2019s analysis of 434 AI-generated news summaries revealed non-Australian sources CNN, BBC and ABC America were introduced despite the user being located in Australia.<\/p>\n

Sign up: AU Breaking News email<\/a><\/p>\n

The technology \u201cbasically sidelined Australian news\u201d, he said, and when Australian sources were used they were usually big players like Nine and the ABC and not smaller, independent media. No [local] journalist was ever mentioned,\u201d Koskie told Guardian Australia.<\/p>\n

The technology is \u201cjust reproducing crises that we didn\u2019t properly attend to before\u201d, he said. \u201cThe Australian media ecosystem is already struggling with concentrated ownership, declining independent outlets, and news deserts in regional areas.\u201d<\/p>\n

Koskie became interested in the impact of Copilot when it installed itself on his system without permission in 2023 and invited him to use seven globally focused prompts to get his news.<\/p>\n

Prompts included: \u201cwhat are the major health or medical news updates for this week\u201d and \u201cwhat are the top global news stories today\u201d.<\/p>\n

He decided to follow the prompts to see where it would take him.<\/p>\n

The majority of Copilot\u2019s answers linked to US websites, and in three of the seven news prompts studied, no Australian sources appeared at all.<\/p>\n

\u201cEven when Australia was mentioned, it was very often just Australia, rather than Ballarat or the Kimberley,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cAustralians are invisible in this. In international studies, what people trust is the local news. And so we have this issue of declining trust in media, and the media that they\u2019re being exposed to through these new platforms is not the one that people trust, which is local.<\/p>\n

\u201cTrust is also in people, and the people are invisible.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to the Reuters Institute\u2019s predictions for media, journalism and technology in 2026<\/a>, generative AI \u201cthreatens to upend the news industry by offering more efficient ways of accessing and distilling information at scale\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cMeanwhile search engines are turning into AI-driven answer engines, where content is surfaced in chat windows, raising fears that referral traffic for publishers could dry up, undermining existing and future business models.\u201d<\/p>\n

Koskie, a postdoctoral research associate in digital communication, suggests extending the news media bargaining incentive remit to consider AI tools and incentivising AI companies to embed geographical location in their coding design.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile Copilot may offer a sleek, automated gateway to news, this study highlights its tendencies to reinforce dominant international sources, sideline independent and regional media, and erase the human labour behind journalism itself,\u201d the academic paper warns. \u201cIf left unchecked, such tools risk compounding Australia\u2019s existing media pluralism challenges rather than alleviating them.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Australian journalism is largely \u201cinvisible\u201d in AI-generated news summaries from Microsoft Copilot, which overwhelmingly favour US or European…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":255968,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[345,343,344,85,46,125],"class_list":["post-255967","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255967","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=255967"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255967\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/255968"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=255967"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=255967"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=255967"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}