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Artificial intelligence is accelerating the marginalisation of Australian journalism, with new research showing Microsoft Copilot’s Ai-driven platforms default to overseas news sources and silence local journalists. It’s yet another criticism of Microsoft’s Ai which has manifested overwhelming online hatred for the enshittification many of the company’s products including the Windows operating system, Office suite, Edge web browser, all four versions of its Teams collaboration suite, XBox platform and OneDrive cloud storage, amongst others.
A University of Sydney study has revealed that Microsoft’s Copilot consistently prioritises US and European outlets in its automated news summaries, even when users are located in Australia.
Dr Timothy Koskie, from the Centre for Ai, Trust and Governance, analysed more than 430 Copilot-generated summaries and found Australian voices were largely absent.
“Ai-generated news summaries may offer a sleek, automated gateway to information, but in reality they’re deepening existing inequalities in the Australian media ecosystem,” Koskie said.
“Ai is preferencing dominant international sources and sidelining independent and regional media, silencing journalists in the process.”
Local Journalism Largely Ignored
The study focused on how Microsoft Copilot surfaces news content in response to prompts, many of which are preloaded or recommended by the platform.
Seven general prompts were tested, including ‘what are the major health or medical news updates for this week’ and ‘what are the top global news stories today’.
Despite the system being tagged to an Australian location, only around 20 per cent of the generated summaries included hyperlinks to Australian media.
More than half the referenced sites were based in the US, and three of the seven prompts returned no Australian links at all.
Koskie said the trend was clear.
“The most obvious pattern from the study was that Ai-generated outputs were replicating and exacerbating existing power imbalances in the Australian media ecosystem,” he said.
“These included the concentration of ownership, reduced access to local and regional news, sustainability concerns and lack of content diversity.”
Content Without Context
The research also found that Copilot stripped out important contextual elements such as local place names and author attribution.
“Journalists are almost never named, instead homogenised as ‘researchers’ or ‘experts’, and Australia’s regions and local communities are rarely mentioned, so local context is lost,” Koskie said.
He also questioned how Microsoft introduced Copilot.
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“The fact that Copilot not only installed itself on Windows systems without user permission as part of a phased rollout but also instructed users to use it as a news source, while featuring its own content prominently on MSN, is an obvious structural issue,” he said.
“This is a purely one-way relationship Australian journalism cannot compete with, and conceivably a pretty clear abuse of power.”
Regulation Not Keeping Pace
Koskie’s research highlights what he describes as a widening policy gap between how existing legislation handles digital platforms and how Ai systems are operating.
He says that while the News Media Bargaining Incentive was introduced to address revenue imbalances between platforms like Google or Meta and news publishers, Ai-generated news sits outside its scope.
In reality, the News Media Bargaining Incentive turned out to be a shakedown of big-tech by the then Liberal Party Government in order to divert revenue to its primary partners within Australia’s mainstream media – no independent publishers received anything.
Still, Koskie continues, “These findings raise critical questions about whether existing mechanisms remain fit for purpose in an Ai-mediated news environment,” Koskie said.
“The Australian media landscape is already struggling with concentrated ownership, declining independent outlets and news deserts in regional areas. Ai news summaries favour international sources over local journalism, and if Australian links do happen to appear, readers have already consumed the news and are unlikely to click through.”
Decline In Traffic, Decline In Revenue
According to Koskie, the current structure of Copilot and similar platforms undermines any chance for Australian outlets to monetise their journalism.
“This means a decline in website traffic, undermining opportunities for revenue and audience engagement for Australian outlets in an already fraught media environment. There is no business model here for Australian journalism,” he said.
He also criticised the content scope of Copilot’s suggested prompts, which tend to focus on health, science and global politics.
That framing, he said, steers users away from issues that may be more relevant at a local or regional level.
Location-Based Design Could Help
Koskie believes that intervention is needed to avoid further erosion of Australian media.
“Without intervention, Australia faces disappearing local news, fewer independent voices and a weakened democracy,” he said.
“But the functionality of Ai-driven news services is a design choice that can and should be regulated to serve the public interest.”
He proposed a practical reform: expand the remit of the News Media Bargaining Incentive to include Ai-generated content, and require platforms to build geographical weighting into their algorithms.
“One possible solution is incentivising Ai companies to embed geographical location in their coding design, to ensure local sources and outlets are appearing in the generated news summaries, whether users follow suggested prompts or come up with their own.”
Last Updated on January 27, 2026 by Nick Ross
