# Anticipating Impacts: Using Large-Scale Scenario Writing to Explore Diverse Implications of Generative AI in the News Environment

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2310.06361 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.06361/

## Key facts

- Cited by 6 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 10 Oct 2023.

## Built on by (most cited first, 6 of 6)

- ["Ownership, Not Just Happy Talk": Co-Designing a Participatory Large Language Model for Journalism](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.17299/) (2025)
- [From Hazard Identification to Controller Design: Proactive and LLM-Supported Safety Engineering for ML-Powered Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.07974/) (2025)
- [Drifting Away from Truth: GenAI-Driven News Diversity Challenges LVLM-Based Misinformation Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.12711/) (2025)
- [Envisioning Stakeholder-Action Pairs to Mitigate Negative Impacts of AI: A Participatory Approach to Inform Policy Making](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.14869/) (2025)
- [ECHO: A Participatory Framework for Bias-Anchored AI Harm Anticipation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.03068/) (2025)
- [Informing AI Policy Assessment using Large-Scale Simulation of Interventions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.27395/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

The tremendous rise of generative AI has reached every part of society - including the news environment. There are many concerns about the individual and societal impact of the increasing use of generative AI, including issues such as disinformation and misinformation, discrimination, and the promotion of social tensions. However, research on anticipating the impact of generative AI is still in its infancy and mostly limited to the views of technology developers and/or researchers. In this paper, we aim to broaden the perspective and capture the expectations of three stakeholder groups (news consumers; technology developers; content creators) about the potential negative impacts of generative AI, as well as mitigation strategies to address these. Methodologically, we apply scenario writing and use participatory foresight in the context of a survey (n=119) to delve into cognitively diverse imaginations of the future. We qualitatively analyze the scenarios using thematic analysis to systematically map potential impacts of generative AI on the news environment, potential mitigation strategies, and the role of stakeholders in causing and mitigating these impacts. In addition, we measure respondents' opinions on a specific mitigation strategy, namely transparency obligations as suggested in Article 52 of the draft EU AI Act. We compare the results across different stakeholder groups and elaborate on the (non-) presence of different expected impacts across these groups. We conclude by discussing the usefulness of scenario-writing and participatory foresight as a toolbox for generative AI impact assessment.