Mi3
By Andrew Birmingham and wires – Martech | Ecom | CX Editor 28 Jan 2026
Australia’s news diet is being quietly Americanised: a study finds AI news summaries amplify US voices, sideline local journalism and risk hollowing out the country’s media, and with it democracy, according to the author of a Sydney University study.
A recent study conducted by Dr. Timothy Koskie from the University of Sydney’s Centre for AI, Trust and Governance has highlighted the impact of AI platforms on the Australian media landscape. The research which was undertaken in 2024, focused on Microsoft’s Copilot, examining 434 AI-generated news summaries, and found a distinct preference for international media outlets over local Australian sources.
Despite being tagged to an Australian location, the majority of Copilot’s outputs linked to US or European sources, with only about one-fifth featuring Australian media. Over half of the most referenced websites in the AI-generated summaries were based in the US. In three of the seven news prompts studied, no Australian sources appeared at all.
The study did not assess the quality of the AI-generated content or address issues of misinformation. Instead, it concentrated on which voices were amplified or silenced by the AI-generated summaries. Koskie said, “AI-generated news summaries may offer a sleek, automated gateway to information, but in reality they’re deepening existing inequalities in the Australian media ecosystem.”
The research also found that AI-generated news summaries often erase the identities of journalists, referring to them as ‘researchers’ or ‘experts’. Australia’s regions or local communities are rarely mentioned, leading to a loss of local context. “Journalists are almost never named, instead homogenised as ‘researchers’ or ‘experts’, and Australia’s regions and local communities are rarely mentioned, so local context is lost,” said Koskie.
The study highlights a policy gap, as AI-driven news generation is not covered by Australia’s News Media Bargaining Incentive. Koskie suggests that AI news summaries contribute to a decline in website traffic for Australian outlets, undermining revenue and audience engagement. “This is a purely one-way relationship Australian journalism cannot compete with, and conceivably a pretty clear abuse of power,” he said.
That starts with the practicality of distribution, he told Mi3.
He said he became interesting in studying the impact of Gen AI on news when copilot system installed itself on my computer and offered to give me the news “Research indicates that that’s important. People listen to the computer’s advice. They’ll follow the algorithm, what it suggests. And so that sort flags an immediate implication on the way people consume their news, …the fact that Copilot installed itself, that isn’t something that ABC News is able to do, that’s not something that the Daily Telegraph is able to do, there’s a platform power issue there. “
Koskie’s research suggests extending the News Media Bargaining Incentive to include AI tools and incentivising AI companies to embed geographical location in their coding to ensure local sources are included. “Governments in Australia and around the world need to recognise local news production as essential democratic infrastructure, and work with AI companies to ensure their citizens remain informed on local affairs and voices,” he said.
The study indicates that AI-generated outputs replicate and exacerbate existing power imbalances in the Australian media ecosystem. These include concentration of ownership, access to local and regional news, media sustainability, and diversity of content. “The most obvious pattern from the study was that AI‑generated outputs were replicating and exacerbating existing power imbalances in the Australian media ecosystem, such as concentration of ownership, access to local and regional news, media sustainability and diversity of content,” Koskie said.
“It’s very, very American, that it has CNN, it has USA Today, it has [The US] ABC News It also has our ABC, but it has an enormous amount of American content compared to what an Australian is going to see.”
It also tends to embed mainstream media voices, which is a problem for content diversity, Koskie suggested.
“It was the same ones that are currently dominating our really, really heavily dominated news environment already. So it didn’t have Illawarra mercury, it didn’t have crikey, it didn’t have all those special interest publications that do all sorts of interesting things.
“Without intervention, Australia faces disappearing local news, fewer independent voices and a weakened democracy,” he said.
“These findings raise critical questions about whether existing mechanisms like the News Media Bargaining Incentive remain fit for purpose in an AI-mediated news environment,” Koskie concluded.
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