Journalism industry leaders are reacting to the sudden arrival of freely available generative AI tools with more urgency than, it is now acknowledged, they did to the dawn of the internet.

ChatGPT arrived on the scene in November 2022 and already many publishers have guidelines and codes of practice in place for its use in their newsrooms, as well as ideas about how it can be implemented to create efficiencies and perhaps free up journalists for more complex journalism.

As a result, AI comes up at every industry meeting and conference right now – but there is a mixture of pessimism and optimism in the air.