COLLEGE PARK, Md. — There are new A.I. tools in development for the next generation of journalists.
Today, the University of Maryland, College Park announced it's gotten a $1 million grant to make those tools a reality.
The money comes from the Scripps Howard Fund - the nonprofit part of our parent company.
Professors at the College Park campus say they will use the grant to develop products like an "A.I. Meeting Watchdog," to monitor government meetings as they're happening, and "The Beat Book," to help smaller news organizations with a common problem.
Sean Mussenden, principal lecturer at the college, explained:
They have a lot of turnover in staff, and so you get institutional knowledge walking out the door. So the idea with 'The Beat Book' is to train artificial knowledge... specifically on the local news organization's archives, and other sources of information, so that when a reporter has a question or wants to know the background of something, it's a much more contextually interesting, relevant answer than just, like, keyword searching in a news library or something.
The Philip Merrill College of Journalism will be developing four A.I. products over the next three years. The others include a "Reporter's Tool Box" (to streamline reporters' workflows) and a "Visibility for Local News Project" (to help local news become more visible online).
College Park is one of two universities receiving money. Arizona State University also got a $1 million grant.
UMD receives grant to develop A.I. products for journalists
