As a senior who is graduating in less than five months and has a dream of majoring in communications, watching what’s going on in the media is appalling. 

Growing up I never could decide on what I wanted to do after school when asked

 “What do you want to go to college for?” my answer was always “I want to be a lawyer” which was always a lie. Lying always seemed easier than making an actual decision until the Fall of 2022 when I joined journalism. 

Joining journalism opened my eyes to a whole new world that I never thought about before. To be honest I only joined journalism because I needed another elective and I didn’t know what else to pick. I was thrown to the wolves right off the bat and I will forever be grateful for that because if I didn’t have people pushing me I probably would have never realized my love for communications. 

Because of journalism, I was finally able to confidently answer the question “ What do you want to go to college for?” I would tell them I wanted to major in communications and minor in photography however, with everything that’s been going on in the media I’m not so sure anymore. Seeing big news outlets such as ESPN use AI is deeply upsetting and causes me to worry about the future of the field of communications. 

Recently ESPN used Artificial intelligence to create a fake Damian Lillard NBA video. Not only was the interview digitally altered to make it appear that it happened directly after the Milwaukee Bucks game, but AI was used to replace Lillard’s jersey and the TNT label that was originally on the microphone.The clips were taken from an interview in 2020 when Lillard was playing for the Portland Trail Blazers. 

Instead of ESPN fully admitting to what happened the broadcaster made a statement to Sports Media saying “We occasionally look to connect sports moments of the past with contemporary imagery and storylines as part of our social content. While it was never our intention to misrepresent anything for fans, We completely recognize how this instance confused.”  If that’s the case then it should have been noted in the caption and not made to seem as if Lillard was being interviewed post game. And obviously, it was gonna confuse especially for the diehard fans of Lillard’s who can recognize every single one of his interviews from 50 miles away. 

The New York Times is busting down on AI, specifically OpenAI. On Dec. 27 the New York Times sued OpenAi for using their articles to train the AI to write for them. Knowing that this is possible is terrifying and steers me away from accomplishing my dreams. Every time I see something new happen in the media it just leads me further away. 

Real news is extremely important. Being able to be updated about what’s actually happening around the world is something that will always be needed. We shouldn’t feel the need to fact check everything that is given to us. We should be able to read and watch real stories with real information and be able to go on with our day without wondering if what we just read was real.