Join us for the AI x Visual Journalism Forum in LA

Register now for the AI x Visual Journalism Forum, Aug 25–26 in Los Angeles

Registration is open for the AI x Visual Journalism Forum, produced in partnership with Arizona State University's Narrative and Emerging Media program in Los Angeles on August 25–26. AI is changing how visual journalism gets made and how newsrooms work with images and video. The forum puts the people doing that work in the same room: photo and graphics editors, documentary makers, data visualization specialists, investigative reporters and the technologists building the tools. If you're interested in presenting or a sponsorship, please reply to this email.

Two newsrooms on using AI to find local stories

At our Baltimore summit, two newsrooms showed how generative AI is helping them surface local stories hiding in plain sight. Greenpointers, a one-person neighborhood site in Brooklyn, built a “Local Signals Tracker” that feeds community board minutes into Claude and pulls out story tips no small team could find on its own. The Baltimore Banner built a more custom tool, the News Detector. Generative AI Newsroom wrote up how both work.

AI avatars can't stand up ... yet

Here's a tip from a verification session at the summit: If you suspect you're talking to an AI avatar on a video call, ask the person to stand up and walk a few steps (because today's deepfake avatars don't have legs below the desk). Chemical and Engineering News wrote an editorial about AI and the challenges it creates for trust and the art of the interview, based on a session they attended at the summit by NYU's Hilke Schellmann and Loreben Tuquero from Politifact.

Worth a read

• Overview and key findings of the 2026 Digital News Report (Reuters Institute). The annual benchmark on how audiences find and trust news.
• How AI agents reshape knowledge work (Perplexity). Research on how agents raise task autonomy, lower cost and widen what one person can take on.
• When AI builds itself (Anthropic). The company's own account of progress toward recursive self-improvement and why it matters.
• ChatGPT's market share slips below 50% for the first time (TechCrunch). ChatGPT still leads at 1.1 billion monthly users, with Gemini at 662 million and Claude at 245 million.
• 6AM City's secret weapon? 400 newsletters with no staff (A Media Operator). How a local publisher hit profitability by reworking the economics, AI included.
• SPUR publishes a 'common language' for tracking AI use of publisher content (Press Gazette)

Upcoming events

• Aug 25–26, Los Angeles: AI x Visual Journalism Forum with Arizona State University (Hacks/Hackers)
• Sept 17–18, Austin: International Symposium on Journalism (ISOJ) 2026
• Sept 21, Madrid: INMA Media Innovation Week
• Sept 25, NYC: Hacks/Hackers AI x Investigative Journalism event with The New York Times (save the date)
• Nov 17–19, London + online: JournalismAI Festival

Jobs

• Business Correspondent, Artificial Intelligence and Emerging Technologies, The New York Times (San Francisco, CA)
• Technology Reporter, Business of Tech, AI & Power, Semafor (US)
• Director of Product, Platforms & Operations, Semafor (New York, NY)
• Software Engineer, Axios (Remote)
• Executive Director, Investigative Reporters and Editors (Remote)
• Head of Communications, Business, OpenAI (San Francisco, CA)
• Policy Communications Manager, Anthropic (San Francisco / New York)
• Engineering Editorial Lead, Anthropic (San Francisco / New York)