echnology and the press have had a storied relationship—the former has always transformed the way the press operates. From the technological development of the printing press to electronic means such as the radio and television, the institution of the press has been deeply intertwined with the question of technology. It is almost a cliché to assert, but worth restating, that digital technologies and platforms have had an existential impact on the institution of journalism. The impact of digital technologies on the freedom of the press is often framed in oppositional terms: either as a driver of innovation and change or as the harbinger of doom for these freedoms.

It’s time to reframe these discussions regarding press freedom.

Early adopters of digital platforms and technologies were largely optimistic about their potential. Digital citizen journalism, for instance, emerged as a byproduct of the democraticisation of speech and platformisation in the early stages of social media. While the concept seems naive against the din of disinformation and information overload we currently operate under, it was an early precursor to the digital journalist. Many journalists in Pakistan, for instance, either disillusioned with traditional media or pushed out due to economic or political imperatives, have cultivated massive audiences on platforms such as YouTube. Furthermore, many digital media outlets have emerged with subscriber-driven economic models that allow them to operate outside of the economic constraints of traditional journalism.

However, this optimism stands substantially punctured. Many independent digital media platforms have buckled under the pressure of the digital economy, either forced to shut down, downsize or be acquired by traditional media outlets. Independent digital media content creators, while important elements of the information ecosystem, often lack the resources that come with institutional support or lack editorial oversight and rigour essential to maintain the integrity of the press.

The press, in general, is struggling with the algorithmically driven, platform-dependent model of information distribution endemic to digital spaces, which impacts reach and visibility. Independent media content creators often complain of being shadow-banned or of operating within increasingly restrictive community guidelines and terms of service imposed by social media platforms.

The rise of artificial intelligence, particularly generative artificial intelligence (GenAI), poses particular challenges to press freedom. Last year on the World Press Freedom Day, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights noted that “[a]lthough AI can be a useful tool for journalists it also carries significant risks for press freedom.”

The most commonly cited anxiety among journalists is job displacement, particularly at a time when most newsrooms face substantial downsizing. AI-fuelled automation is a tempting alternative to enhance the productivity of existing, shrinking teams. Tools such as for translation can be enabling for journalists and readers wishing to access more sources or modes of knowledge. On the other hand, allowing automation to displace human skills can have a deleterious impact on the quality of journalism.

Additionally, AI has meant that fewer media personnel are expected to take on additional jobs, with the default expectation being that certain tasks can be automated. This leaves less time for deep thinking, investigative research and original writing to emerge—the foundation of quality journalism.

Extensive use of AI in newsrooms also raises concerns regarding accuracy, given the propensity of AI chatbots to hallucinate or reproduce false information found elsewhere. These errors, when reproduced in media outputs, can substantially erode trust in the press.

While these challenges are novel and urgent, it is important to acknowledge that the press has never been and cannot exist outside of technology. Across history, the institution of the press has always developed alongside technological change. While there is no denying that digital technologies—particularly GenAI and platform-dependent distribution systems—pose incredible challenges to the core values of press freedoms, some of these discussions assume that solutions must come from either complete rejection or adaptation of these systems. The first framing underestimates the all-encompassing nature of digital technologies. Even readers of this article—whether they are reading it on the internet or in physical paper form—will acknowledge that at some point technologies such as word processing, communications networks and a digital printer were involved in getting this piece to them.

The press cannot exist independently of technology; however, that does not mean that we surrender to its inevitability.

Progressively, there is an element of defeatism creeping into our discourse regarding freedoms and technologies. While the behemoth of big tech and the exponential rise of GenAI tools loom large over any conversation regarding human-driven knowledge production, we must understand digital technologies as socio-political artefacts, meaning that there is nothing inevitable about them.

Tech is a product of economic, social and political drivers. GenAI chatbots did not emerge simply from a great organic demand; they were the product of conscious profit-driven decisions made in the Silicon Valley by a small group of tech CEOs. These companies and the men at their helm have an incentive in myth-building that these transformations are linear. Megalomaniac individuals such as Sam Altman claim that these GenAI systems, in their current formulation, built on our collective unpaid intellectual labour, are the future.

Those, particularly in the press, must see beyond this smokescreen and envision a press untethered from technologies that are built on exploitative profit models and the backs of so many journalists, authors and artists that came before them. The reason, for instance, GenAI tools are able to write entire press articles or produce scripts for news videos based on mere prompts is because they have been trained on work that journalists and their peers have been doing since the advent of the press.

Resisting cannibalisation of the press by these technologies requires proactively joining the larger fight against big tech and questioning their logic. Press freedom in the age of AI cannot be preserved by adaptation or rejection of emerging tech, but by resistance to systems that hollow out journalism while promising to modernise it.

The writer is a researcher and campaigner on human and digital rights issues.