"We already expect quite a lot from the public in terms of media literacy to be able to navigate the contemporary information environment; the use of these technologies in news adds a whole other layer to that."
This was already true years ago after search engines became a thing. The main answers that come to mind for your question are:
providing novel information that wasn’t online before.
providing information to you that you wouldn’t have thought to ask for on your own.
Both of these remain valid and useful reasons for going to a web site even if that web site’s content is AI generated.
There’s also the matter that “AI generated” is a very broad term. Did someone merely turn an AI loose with a vague instruction to generate some pap to fill a page out with? Or did someone actually provide it with a subject and some information to write about and give the resulting article a read-through to ensure it was good? Did they write a rough draft and just have the AI do the polishing? There’s lots of approaches here, some of them much better than others.
This was already true years ago after search engines became a thing. The main answers that come to mind for your question are:
Both of these remain valid and useful reasons for going to a web site even if that web site’s content is AI generated.
There’s also the matter that “AI generated” is a very broad term. Did someone merely turn an AI loose with a vague instruction to generate some pap to fill a page out with? Or did someone actually provide it with a subject and some information to write about and give the resulting article a read-through to ensure it was good? Did they write a rough draft and just have the AI do the polishing? There’s lots of approaches here, some of them much better than others.