When OpenAI unveiled its natural language model ChatGPT in November, local news publishers quickly took notice, imagining what the tool could do for their journalism.
One of them was Scott Brodbeck, founder and CEO of Local News Now, which operates local news sites in Virginia including flagship ARLnow. Between his three outlets, he had an editorial staff of seven. Automation had been a way of stretching his resources, even before he started experimenting with artificial intelligence.
Within a matter of months, Brodbeck had put together a number of AI-powered automations.
