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- China crisis - 15th July 2026
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During 23 years with the BBC, and a 42 year journalistic career (when he was trained to use clear and simple language, avoiding jargon), our Editor, Welshman Phil Parry, stories were either written on typewriters or early forms of computer, but now comes more evidence of the apparently inexorable rise in Artificial Intelligence (AI) – some of it emerging from the Iran war – which could change the role of a journalist forever.
The speed of change is increasing.
When I started in journalism in 1983, all stories were written on a typewriter, before I moved on to a Personal Computer (PC), but we have to be ready for Artificial Intelligence (AI) which could change things even more, and now there is more evidence of this – including from the Iran war.
Perhaps standard local reporting of results of a flower show, or school sports day, will be done by high-powered computer in future, as munching through data quickly is exactly what AI can do.
But what about court or council reports, and what will that mean for local democracy?
These stories involve public statements, so maybe the quotes can just be fed into a Large Language Model (LLM) by someone with no journalistic training whatsoever.
I like to think that the kind of investigative journalism I undertake would be impossible to replicate by AI, but who knows?!
It’s certainly the case that sources must be checked even more thoroughly, because you cannot just rely on (for example) a picture of someone with a dubious character, as it might have been generated by AI.
All of this has been put centre stage by extraordinary events of the last few days.
Let’s start with the war in Iran (stay with me on this!).
Social media are awash with images of the Middle East taken by Chinese satellites or released by Chinese firms, and many of them have AI at their heart.
The proliferation of these Chinese photographs reflects dramatic advances in the scope and sophistication of that country’s Earth-observation capabilities, and marks the end of a Western monopoly on the most advanced images from space.
Evidence of collaboration between Chinese satellite firms and Iran has mounted in recent weeks.
China Siwei, part of the state-owned China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASTC), is known to have taken high-resolution photos of American and allied military sites.
The Financial Times (FT) has reported that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) have purchased a Chinese satellite, which may be the source of some of the images published by Iranian state media showing the charred results of their strikes.
Then there is the frontier AI company Anthropic which decided not to publicly release a product called Mythos, claiming it was too powerful and dangerous to be made generally available, because of a significant leap in its hacking abilities.
Mythos, the firm say, could knock out the software systems that power plants, banks, and even armed forces rely on every day.
To simply release it, then, would be irresponsible, at least in Anthropic’s telling. They were effectively saying to regulators, PLEASE curb the work we are doing, because until you take action we’ll have to.
But how long before some errant tech whiz kid in a bedroom somewhere, gets hold of a copy and puts it out?!
So hang on to your hats, because the way we get information is about to change completely.
Best stick with The Eye – I can guarantee the stories there aren’t written by AI!
The memories of Phil’s decades-long award-winning career in journalism as he was gripped by the rare disabling condition Hereditary Spastic Paraplegia (HSP), have been released in a major book ‘A GOOD STORY’ (which was NOT written by AI!). Order it now!
On the day of the count tomorrow – Phil examines how during his career he has conducted numerous interviews with senior politicians, and presented any number of election programmes, with several, hosted by others, to be broadcast on Friday. Counting the votes AFTER the ballot makes it a historic change.
