A former editor of The Independent has suggested news companies are more likely to use time savings created by AI to sack staff than to redeploy them to do more original journalism.

Speaking at a London Press Club debate on AI and journalism on Monday night, Chris Blackhurst voiced a fear that easily-produced “guff” was likely to fill the void left as artificial intelligence undermined the news industry’s business model.

Blackhurst was responding to a point from another panellist, consultant Rupert Knowles, who said AI “can certainly free up time to actually do other things” in a newsroom, for example by creating multiple versions of a social media post for different formats.