Will AI Replace Journalists? Russian Media Experts Say Not So Fast

As generative AI barrels into newsrooms around the world, Russian media experts are hitting pause on panic

Speaking at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, they agreed: while neural networks are evolving at lightning speed, the idea that AI will fully displace human journalists is still premature—and possibly misguided.

China offers a compelling case study: the country publishes over 800 human-written news pieces per day, alongside more than 4,000 AI-generated ones. But those AI outputs don’t go unchecked—strict laws require editorial oversight and verification of machine-written news. Russia, experts say, is heading in the same direction: developing clear legal frameworks to regulate and label neural content, much like “non-GMO” tags on food packaging.

And what about human writers? Far from being phased out, they may actually be elevated. In the future, "written by a human" could become a badge of quality—a marker of authenticity in a flood of machine prose.

“There’s no threat of AI taking over journalism wholesale in Russia,” say industry voices. Instead, the newsroom of tomorrow will be a hybrid collective: human storytellers driven by passion, supported—but not replaced—by algorithms.

The takeaway? In a world of machine-written headlines, the byline still matters. And the future of journalism might just belong to those who write with heart—and get labeled accordingly.