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The best-selling newspaper in Europe is cutting 20% of its jobs and having a variety of editorial roles performed by artificial intelligence (AI) going forward, it has been announced.
The massive tabloid Bild in Germany is owned by Europe’s biggest media publisher, Axel Springer SE, which sent an email to staff announcing a €100m effort to cut costs, as reported by the Frankfurter Allgemeine newspaper.
These measures include cutting hundreds of jobs, and making a variety of editor positions redundant, as AI can now fulfil those roles. Bild currently employs around 1,000 staff, and an estimated 200 or so are now to be let go.
Axel Springer reportedly said that Bild would “unfortunately be parting ways with colleagues who have tasks that in the digital world are performed by AI and/or automated processes,” adding that “AI will soon be able to completely take over the layout of the printed newspaper.” The group claimed that in the near future, various roles, including editors, print production staff, sub-editors, proofreaders and photo editors “will no longer exist as they do today.”
The company previously announced that it would be moving towards becoming a “purely digital media company.”
However, a Bild spokesperson told CNN that the job cuts and corporate restructuring had “nothing to do with the use of AI,” and that the AI policy was a separate move meant merely to aid journalists.
The issue of AI in media came to the forefront of debate in Ireland last month, when the Irish Times apologised and retracted a “hoax” AI-generated article that was submitted to the paper as if it was from a real person by a prankster.
Irish Times apologises and takes down 'hoax' AI-generated article https://t.co/0tnA0LW46d
— Sky News (@SkyNews) May 15, 2023
A report by the investment bank Goldman Sachs released in April of this year found that AI could replace the equivalent of 300 million full-time jobs worldwide, and could replace a quarter of work tasks in the US and Europe.
The report found a significant discrepancy in how much AI would impact various economic sectors, with an estimated 44% of legal tasks being possible to automate, but only 4% of construction tasks.
The report also claimed that AI could significantly increase economic productivity globally, representing an almost $7 trillion increase in global GDP.
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