Australian journalism is largely 'invisible' in AI-generated news summaries from Microsoft Copilot, which overwhelmingly favor US or European media, according to research by the University of Sydney. Roughly one-fifth of responses to Copilot news prompts feature links to Australian media sources, according to researcher Dr Timothy Koskie from the university's Centre for AI, Trust and Governance. In his paper, 'Invisible journalists and dominant algorithms', Koskie warns that the increasing use of these tools will almost certainly lead to more news deserts, fewer independent voices, and a weakened democracy. He urges the development of policy mechanisms, such as the news media bargaining code, to help journalism thrive. Searching for information, including news, is now one of AI's most widely used functions, according to Reuters Institute surveys. When users receive AI summaries without clicking through to the original news website, they starve news outlets of web traffic and revenue, posing a threat to Australian media outlets' financial viability. Koskie's analysis of 434 AI-generated news summaries revealed non-Australian sources CNN, BBC, and ABC America were introduced despite the user being located in Australia. The technology 'basically sidelines Australian news', he said, and when Australian sources were used they were usually big players like Nine and the ABC and not smaller, independent media. No [local] journalist was ever mentioned,' Koskie told Guardian Australia. The technology is 'just reproducing crises that we didn’t properly attend to before', he said. 'The Australian media ecosystem is already struggling with concentrated ownership, declining independent outlets, and news deserts in regional areas.' Koskie became interested in the impact of Copilot when it installed itself on his system without permission in 2023 and invited him to use seven globally focused prompts to get his news. Prompts included: 'what are the major health or medical news updates for this week' and 'what are the top global news stories today'. The majority of Copilot's answers linked to US websites, and in three of the seven news prompts studied, no Australian sources appeared at all. 'Even when Australia was mentioned, it was very often just Australia, rather than Ballarat or the Kimberley,' he said. 'Australians are invisible in this. In international studies, what people trust is the local news. And so we have this issue of declining trust in media, and the media that they’re being exposed to through these new platforms is not the one that people trust, which is local. 'Trust is also in people, and the people are invisible.' According to the Reuters Institute's predictions for media, journalism, and technology in 2026, generative AI 'threatens to upend the news industry by offering more efficient ways of accessing and distilling information at scale'. 'Meanwhile, search engines are turning into AI-driven answer engines, where content is surfaced in chat windows, raising fears that referral traffic for publishers could dry up, undermining existing and future business models.' Koskie, a postdoctoral research associate in digital communication, suggests extending the news media bargaining incentive remit to consider AI tools and incentivizing AI companies to embed geographical location in their coding design. 'While Copilot may offer a sleek, automated gateway to news, this study highlights its tendencies to reinforce dominant international sources, sideline independent and regional media, and erase the human labor behind journalism itself,' the academic paper warns. 'If left unchecked, such tools risk compounding Australia's existing media pluralism challenges rather than alleviating them.'
