How AI helps
journalists
move faster,
dig deeper

Intelligence

Alexia Fernández Campbell, one of IRW’s former graduate fellows and the first in a partnership with The Washington Post, returned to AU on March 26 alongside Gary Harki, the architect of Bloomberg Law's investigations team, for a conversation on how artificial intelligence is transforming investigative journalism. The event, hosted by the School of Communication, gave students and faculty a front-row view of how the team is working at the intersection of traditional reporting and cutting-edge technology.

Fernández Campbell and Harki walked attendees through how their team uses large language models and other deep learning techniques to analyze vast troves of civil rights litigation records — uncovering potential stories that would have been nearly impossible to tell through conventional reporting alone. Both stressed, though, that these LLMs are just the start, and the findings are subjected to rigorous fact-checking to ensure accuracy. And the data analysis and trends they find through public-records requests, and often a deep dive into court documents, are  followed, as always, by extensive reporting.

In particular, Fernández Campbell explained the research and reporting process she and fellow reporter Umar Farooq used for an investigation into the deadly use by police of a restraint called The Wrap. The team identified 41 incidents in which law enforcement used The Wrap on someone who died. Their analysis included an examination of U.S. court records, in-custody death investigations, and videos obtained through public-records requests.

“The AI summaries of thousands of federal civil rights lawsuits we’ve been looking at helped me uncover widespread misuse of a police restraint called The Wrap,” Fernández Campbell wrote in an email exchange after the event. “The latest models are excellent at summarizing, with almost zero errors.”
Rather than replacing traditional investigative instincts, Fernández Campbell and Harki stressed that these AI tools are amplifying them, allowing journalists to move faster and dig deeper.

Fernández Campbell said she also gives the AI tools specific things to look for in documents and return responses in a spreadsheet format.

“I still need to check all the responses for accuracy,” Fernandez Campbell wrote, “but it has been a tremendous help in allowing me to find documents that are relevant to an investigation.”