How AI Will Transform Storytelling: Skills for the Future of Journalism
The next generation of journalists and conference producers won’t just report stories — they’ll be hybrid creators, mastering Gen AI to craft engaging content and production.
This post explores Gen AI’s impact into lesser acknowledged areas of storytelling and journalism, why human storytelling skills are more critical than ever, and what it takes to produce compelling, AI-driven narratives that audiences will trust.
Skills for conference producers and future generation of journalists will embrace crafting content using Gen AI and making hybrid productions. This post is one of three looking at skills for creatives and journalists.
At present the rump of Gen AI in journalism focuses around summarising, text generation, and its distribution to audiences. Few are using GenAI for story creation.
I expect by 2030 that will have shifted dramatically, because of proof of usage and trust. Just as YouTube moved the dial, so will a slew of GenAI factual storytellers.
If you trust the author, whether its an illustration, graphic representation or designed image they’ve created to tell stories, the audience will invest their time. Also, as I illustrate on my platform trust-verification models will build trustworthiness.
Over my career I’ve created montage commissioned stories that have aired on CNN International, World Press Photography, and Obama 100 Days at the Southbank Centre. What’s happening now is truly exciting.
However, crafting via AI is not as easy as some AI influencers and podcasts have made it out to be. Yes you can prompt a Gen AI to deliver a whole storyboard, but that diminishes creative agency, personalisation and nuances.
So, more so than ever, understanding the terms, labels and fundamental philosophies and psychologies of storytelling will be needed. For at the very least the more knowledge you have, the better you’ll be at delivering purposeful prompts, and the richer your story will become.
This story started with one image. The creative task was remaking a classic aria into a modern story. My influences were Joel Coen’s film version “The Tragedy of Macbeth” and Kenneth Branagh’s 1993 film “Much Ado About Nothing, both featuring Denzel Washington.
From that one image, what I call the creative fight club over weeks began, in which the story arc and types of images to create the story were generated.
Ensuring the character was the same in different settings, and matched the theme of the song, even though the visual story had been modernised were some of the challenges.
If you’re running a creative or storytelling event and you’d like me to explain more about my process you can see more of my work below and contact me.
www.daviddunkleygyimah.com and here www.viewmagazine.tv
🙏🏿
