Key points
- AI-generated stories published without proper verification
- Ad revenue crash drives reckless content production
- Quality journalism sacrificed for speed and SEO traffic
ISLAMABAD: On the evening of 28 July, chaos briefly gripped New York City’s Park Avenue. Rumours of an active shooter swirled online, fuelled by X (formerly Twitter), where misinformation, fear, and speculation drowned out facts.
Journalist Nic Dawes writes, “I think I’ve seen the end stage of ad-based content monetisation in India, and it is as troubling as you might expect.”
What he is talking about, is how news rooms use AI to break stories fast.
Read here https://t.co/164q11CF9z— TheNewsMinute (@thenewsminute) August 9, 2025
Local newsrooms scrambled to verify details. But the first media outlet to publish a live story? India’s Hindustan Times quickly followed by Times Now, both relying solely on unverified social media posts, according to Newslaundry.
Why were Indian publications reporting breaking news from New York without reporters on the ground or sources in the NYPD? The answer lies in the economics of content monetisation.
Newsrooms at Indian giants like the Hindustan Times and Economic Times now chase global search traffic, aiming to earn high ad revenues from US and European audiences.
But with ad rates collapsing and Google’s AI search reducing referrals, this race is leading to reckless practices — including AI-generated stories presented as real journalism.
Fabricated quote
In July, Economic Times published a piece on a fake AI-generated video of Barack Obama being jailed — allegedly shared by Donald Trump. The article included a fabricated quote from disinformation expert Nina Jankowicz, who never spoke to ET.
The quote, likely produced by a large language model, circulated widely before being quietly removed, without apology or correction.
ET’s “Global Desk” has published other questionable pieces. A supposed apology from a US tech CEO caught at a Coldplay concert was later confirmed fake. The story showed signs of AI authorship: Americanised spelling, formulaic summaries, and vague sourcing.
This is no accident. For over a decade, Indian news outlets have pursued volume over quality. In the 1990s, a price war between ToI and HT in Delhi slashed newspaper prices, pushing publishers to depend on advertising — much like free internet content today. Intrusive ads became standard, and quality journalism suffered.
Feeding trending topics
Now, that print-era logic meets AI. Junior editors feed trending topics into chatbots and churn out hundreds of stories daily — 1,500 in ToI’s case — hoping to capture fleeting online attention. Real verification, context, and accountability are sacrificed.
But the risks are immense. Beyond legal exposure, this erosion of credibility undermines the possibility of building trusted reader relationships — the foundation of sustainable, paid journalism.
If Indian media leaders think this is just a “global desk” issue, they are mistaken. AI-driven shortcuts will creep into other areas — entertainment, business, even politics. Audiences can already bypass the middleman and go straight to AI or social media for their news, reports Newslaundry.
Real innovation with AI — investigating financial patterns, mining public data — could enhance journalism. But that requires a shift from volume to value, something India’s media industry has long struggled to embrace.
