Media Watch has laid into SCA‘s aspirations to make more of its news content across Australia AI scripted and voiced, with host Linton Besser saying the organisation ‘couldn’t give a rats’ about delivering local news to regional listeners.

You can watch, listen to and read the whole segment here: https://www.abc.net.au/mediawatch/episodes/sca/105966556

The show went on to say that Chief Operating Officer Stephen Haddad had even declared at a staff briefing that the company only did news because it’s required to by law.

News readers like Tessa Randello and Breanna Redhead were shown to be doing as many as 39 bulletins a day across four or more local regions. AI additionally is being used to source local news from the internet and compile and write the bulletins with one former SCA executive saying of the time it takes for a journalist to phone police and hospitals and obtain court documents:

“The aim was to automate all of that … and generate it using AI and then you create scripts, use synthetic voices, so it’s all ready in the morning.”

Even Sydney news editor Amy Goggins has a digital clone of her voice providing weather.

A statement from an SCA spokesperson said in response:

“All bulletins continue to be fact-checked, edited, and read by journalists based in our provincial and metro hubs across the country. This new approach allows us to increase the number of regional bulletins we deliver each day and strengthen local news coverage.”

But a time will come where sources of news that AI can mine from sit behind copyrights and paywalls, factually incorrect stories are unwittingly broadcast or emergency information provided is not up to date. Linton said to wrap up that trust in the news is becoming a ‘quaint relic of the past.’

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