Generative visual AI in news: audience perceptions and newsroom policies
Generative visual AI poses profound questions about the purpose, meaning, and value of images. This raises implications for the production, editing, and consumption of images in journalism. The project’s first phase explores how European news audiences perceive AI-generated or AI-involved visual news content and probes what these audiences wish news organisations would do or not do with this technology. The project’s second phase focuses on policy development and innovation within newsrooms. It will be guided by two research questions and will be informed by the results of the first phase, focused on audiences’ perceptions and desires. Taken together, these two phases allow for an understanding of how newsroom policies can be optimised and tweaked to enable innovation and experimentation while also balancing this with the creative, ethical, and responsible use of these tools.
Main Research Topics
- Visual communication
- Digital media
- Journalism studies
- Visual culture
- Generative AI
Research Results
Through this CAIS Fellowship, I and my team were able to interview 60 ordinary news consumers in Germany and Australia to uncover their experiences with AI in news, to identify the ethical-legal issues they perceive exist in this area, and to map the expectations they have regarding how they think news organisations should or should not use AI.
I presented initial findings from this research in November 2024 at the Hans-Bredow Institut/Leibnitz Institut (https://leibniz-hbi.de/en/hbi-events/what-do-news-audiences-want-from-ai-2/) and convened an industry summit in Australia in November to bring together news organisations to discuss audience experiences and expectations regarding generative AI in journalism and, through this research, to reflect on how news organisation AI policies could be developed or refined.
We are publishing in February 2025 an industry report with our findings from the CAIS fellowship research as well as earlier work on generative AI and journalism.
We have two journal articles under review from the CAIS fellowship research project.
Curriculum Vitae
- Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) and Australian Research Council DECRA Fellow, RMIT University (2023-present)
- Affiliated Researcher, Australian Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making & Society, (2024-present)
- Core Member, Digital Ethnography Research Centre (2023-present)
- Associate Member, Communication & Change Co-Lab (2023-present)
- Research Fellow, Weizenbaum Institute / German Internet Institute (2023)
Publications and Presentations
- Thomson, T.J., Thomas, R.J., Riedlinger, M., & Matich, P. (2025). Generative AI and Journalism: Content, Journalistic Perceptions, and Audience Experiences. RMIT University. https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.28068008
- Thomson, T. J. (2024, November 19). What do news audiences want from AI? [Presentation]. Leibniz Media Lunch Talk, Bredow Institute. Online event.
- Thomson, T. J., Thomas, R., & Matich, P. (2024). Generative Visual AI in News Organizations: Challenges, Opportunities, Perceptions, and Policies. Digital Journalism.
- Thomson, T. J. & Thomas, R. (2023). Generative visual AI in newsrooms: Considerations related to production, presentation, and audience interpretation and impact. Journalistik.
- Thomas, R. J. & Thomson, T. J. (2023). What Does a Journalist Look Like? Visualizing Journalistic Roles Through AI. Digital Journalism.