AI was already disrupting jobs like coding, medicine and investment banking, but it also seems to be coming for the fourth estate — journalism.
A newspaper in Italy, Il Foglio, has created an edition entirely with AI. Il Foglio says it’s the first paper in the world to do so. The four-page AI edition was released through its broadsheet and also published online.
“It will be the first daily newspaper in the world on newsstands created entirely using artificial intelligence,” said Il Foglio editor Claudio Cerasa. “For everything. For the writing, the headlines, the quotes, the summaries. And, sometimes, even for the irony.” He added that journalists’ roles would be limited to “asking questions [into an AI tool] and reading the answers”.
The paper was a part of a month-long journalistic experiment aimed at showing the impact AI technology has “on our way of working and our days”. Il Foglio is an established paper, having been founded in 1996 and with a daily readership of over 25,000.
Its AI edition looked and felt like a regular paper. The front page featured a story of US President Donald Trump, a column headlined “Putin, the 10 betrayals, and a story on the Italian economy. The second page carried an article about “situationships” and how young Europeans are fleeing steady relationships. Interestingly, he final page ran AI-generated letters from readers to the editor, with one asking whether AI will render humans “useless” in the future. “AI is a great innovation, but it doesn’t yet know how to order a coffee without getting the sugar wrong,” read the AI-generated response.
The AI paper comes at a time when journalism is already in crisis. Platforms like X have turned millions of citizens into news reporters, and they can have their updates reach people before traditional journalists. Also, all manner of subject matter experts now have their own presence on social media, and don’t need formal intermediaries to have their voices be heard by the people. Meanwhile, journalistic outlets on both sides of the political aisle have been pilloried for their spin and bias, and trust in the media is at an all-time low.
At this point, an fully AI-generated paper would ring further alarm bells in the journalistic community. AI can already write perfect grammar — the AI edition of Il Foglio had no spelling mistakes — and is getting better every day at writing engaging copy. Tools like OpenAI’s Deep Research can research hundreds of sources in minutes, and write perfectly good summaries. And AI can work around the clock, and nearly for free, unlike human journalists who need salaries and times off.
Il Foglio editor Cerasa said Il Foglio AI reflected “a real newspaper” and was the product of “news, debate and provocations”. But it was also a testing ground to show how AI could work “in practice”, he said, while seeing what the impact would be on producing a daily newspaper with the technology and the questions “we are forced to ask ourselves, not only from a journalistic nature”.
“It is just another [Il] Foglio made with intelligence, don’t call it artificial,” Cerasa said.