News without a Byline: AI in Andalusian Newsrooms and the Transparency Dilemma.

Abstract

The emergence of artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming journalistic practices and reigniting debates on authorship, transparency, and professional ethics, particularly in contexts where its adoption remains incipient, such as in Andalusian newsrooms. This exploratory qualitative study, based on semi-structured interviews with journalists from the main newspapers in each province, examines the degree of AI integration, its areas of application, levels of human supervision, and the existence of transparency policies. The findings reveal a limited and uneven use, focused on support functions—such as transcription, proofreading, or layout—without delegating news production to automated systems. Human oversight remains total or predominant, reflecting a cautious stance towards reputational and editorial risks. The study also identifies the absence of protocols to distinguish between content produced by journalists and that assisted by AI, as well as a lack of policies informing the public about its use; only one newsroom reports communicating this explicitly. These results align with previous research highlighting a gap between technological adoption and the establishment of ethical frameworks, underscoring transparency as essential to sustaining public trust. In this context, AI functions more as a supportive tool than as an autonomous agent, highlighting the need for ethical policies, training programmes, and shared authorship models that ensure a responsible and professionally aligned implementation.