In a concerning development, research from the University of Sydney has revealed that Australian journalism is largely “invisible” in AI-generated news summaries from Microsoft’s Copilot. The study, led by Dr. Timothy Koskie, found that the majority of Copilot’s AI-generated responses featured links to US or European media sources, with Australian media sources accounting for only around one-fifth of the responses.
The research paper, titled “Invisible Journalists and Dominant Algorithms,” warns that the increasing use of these AI tools will almost certainly lead to more “news deserts,” fewer independent voices, and a weakened democracy. Koskie urges the development of policy mechanisms, such as the news media bargaining code, to help journalism thrive in the face of these challenges.
Searching for information, including news, is now one of AI’s most widely used functions, according to a Reuters Institute survey. 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 the financial viability of Australian media outlets.
Koskie’s analysis of 434 AI-generated news summaries revealed that non-Australian sources like CNN, BBC, and ABC America were often introduced, even when the user was located in Australia. “The technology basically sidelined Australian news,” he said, and when Australian sources were used, they were usually major players like Nine and the ABC, rather than smaller, independent media.
“The Australian media ecosystem is already struggling with concentrated ownership, declining independent outlets, and news deserts in regional areas,” Koskie warned. “This technology is just reproducing crises that we didn’t properly attend to before.”
The researcher 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. In three of the seven prompts studied, no Australian sources appeared at all.
“Even when Australia was mentioned, it was very often just Australia, rather than Ballarat or the Kimberley,” Koskie said. “Australians 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’re being exposed to through these new platforms is not the one that people trust, which is local.”
Koskie suggests extending the news media bargaining incentive remit to consider AI tools and incentivizing AI companies to embed geographical location in their coding design. “While 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,” the academic paper warns. “If left unchecked, such tools risk compounding Australia’s existing media pluralism challenges rather than alleviating them.”
