New Jersey bill seeking to restrict media use of AI draws sharp criticism

New Jersey lawmakers introduced a bill earlier this year that would restrict the use of artificial intelligence by news outlets, drawing sharp criticism from a leading media scholar who has blasted the proposal as dumb and unnecessary.

The measure would require news organizations to label and disclose AI-generated content, with fines starting at $10,000 for the first violation.

Introduced by a trio of Democrats, the bill, A5164, requires media outlets to label any AI-generated content, credit the original source, and include a disclaimer saying the material may not accurately reflect the source.

Under the proposed law, news organizations can still use AI to “assist its professionals and staff in investigating, researching, and reporting information, but [they are] prohibited from using AI in lieu of professionals and staff.”

Don’t miss the NJ stories that matter. Sign up for our free newsletter  →

Fines would be doubled for the second offense and tripled for the third offense and any subsequent violations. Anyone who believes a media outlet is using artificial intelligence in violation of the law could report the violation to the New Jersey attorney general.

“The use of information from news sources and professional journalists by artificial intelligence without appropriate credit or compensation represents a theft of intellectual property,” the bill states. “The importance of the journalism industry in providing well-sourced and researched information cannot be understated.”

“It is in the interest of New Jersey citizens for the state to take further action to regulate artificial intelligence, particularly in the news media industry, in order to protect journalistic integrity and the responsible dissemination of news.”

The bill has been sitting at the Assembly Science, Innovation and Technology Committee.

Its sponsors — Democratic Assemblymen William Sampson and Julio Marenco of Hudson County and Reginald Atkins of Union County — declined to comment or did not respond to inquiries.

Despite the bill’s allegedly noble intentions, Jeff Jarvis, a leading international scholar in online news and media technology, pilloried the measure as a colossal waste of time and effort.

“It’s stupid and it’s unnecessary,” Jarvis told The Jersey Vindicator. “It’s a reaction to the reflexive moral panic about technology. It accomplishes nothing and potentially causes more problems when there are other things to pay attention to.”

Not everything about AI is inherently bad, Jarvis said.

For instance, journalists can use AI-driven tools to streamline their jobs by translating foreign languages, transcribing meetings, and summarizing complicated documents.

“There are tons of uses. Are we supposed to label all that?” he asked. “The thing is that when it comes to AI, we all use it all day — every time we do a search, every time we get corrected by spell check, and every time we use it for translation.”

Reporters could use AI to finish more monotonous tasks such as rewriting press releases or stories from other news sources, which would free them up for more meaningful projects, Jarvis said.

“Especially in the legacy newsrooms, journalists are given a quota of stories,” Jarvis said, noting that they often don’t even have the time to make phone calls. “They’re rewriting press releases, they’re rewriting each other for the sake of getting clicks, and links, and likes,” he said.

“AI can replace them by doing that and give journalists time to actually do journalism,” he said. “That may not be such a bad thing.”

This reporting is free because readers make it possible. Join them. →

The bill would also create a committee composed of state officials who would craft AI regulations for the media field, probe whether companies have replaced human reporters with AI, and study AI’s effect on work standards and wages among reporters, among other things.

That committee would issue an annual report and send it to the governor and the Legislature each year, according to the bill.

That piece, in particular, made Jarvis cringe.

“The fact that there’s going to be an ‘Artificial Intelligence in Communications Oversight Committee’ is frightening … I’m always going to be nervous about government oversight of the news when the relationship should be the opposite,” he said. “I don’t know who they’re going to appoint to this committee, but I fear it’s going to represent those already well-represented by lobbyists.”

Jarvis questioned why AI use is being discouraged in the media business when its use is being encouraged for innovation in so many other fields. For example, Bill A4363, also sponsored by Atkins and Marenco, provides funding to nonprofit organizations to implement smart technology and artificial intelligence systems to enhance security infrastructure.

“It’s picking on news, particularly,” Jarvis said about the bill. “There’s a lot of impact of artificial intelligence on society — so why this focus just on journalism, I’m not sure.”

Editor’s note: This story was spellchecked with AI.