Dr. T.J. Thomson

Dr TJ Thomson is a senior lecturer at RMIT and an Australian Research Council DECRA Fellow. T.J.’s research is united by its focus on visual communication. A majority of his research centres on the visual aspects of news and journalism and on the concerns and processes relevant to those who make, edit, and present visual news.

Project overview: Online services like Midjourney have recently emerged and allow those without programming skills to easily create algorithmic images from simple text prompts. This has the potential to massively shape how visual news is made, consumed, and perceived and is already being used by major news brands like The Economist, potentially displacing lens-based workers and plunging news organisations into the Wild West of new ethical territory. This internationally comparative project interviews news editors about their work practices and perceptions to identify risks and opportunities related to AI-generated images in news.