Kawandeep Virdee

Rise of the vibecoding journalists “In 2026, the most significant newsroom innovation won’t come from dev teams — it’ll come from journalists who can now create their own tools.” -ise-of-the-vibecoding-journalists In 2025, advances in AI-powered code generation led to the ability to “vibe code,” i.e. create apps through prompting without even looking at the code. These vibe-coding tools lowered the cost and technical expertise required to build prototypes.

I want to share a news storytelling provocation for 2025, coming from a toolmaker who’s been building media prototypes with LLMs over the past year. My hope is that these capabilities will spark ideas from readers working in newsrooms. First, I’ll share what I’ve noticed in using AI in creative tools and interfaces: AI is best used to augment, not replace. Instead of using AI to tell a story, build creative AI tools to help people tell stories.

Over the past year, I’ve been prototyping generative AI tools in media. A few things I’ve noticed for large language models (LLMs) that I believe will further develop in the upcoming year: It’s better to augment skills rather than replace with AI. Using chatGPT to write is okay, sometimes good, but not great. Instead, using it as a place to bounce ideas or get started quickly in a larger workflow is wonderful.