How ChatGPT Changed the Media's Narratives on AI: A Semi-Automated Narrative Analysis Through Frame Semantics

The recent explosion of attention to AI is arguably one of the biggest in the technology's media coverage. To investigate the effects it has on the discourse, we perform a mixed-method frame semantics-based analysis on a dataset of more than 49,000 sentences collected from 5846 news articles that mention AI. The dataset covers the twelve-month period centred around the launch of OpenAI's chatbot ChatGPT and is collected from the most visited open-access English-language news publishers. Our findings indicate that during the half year succeeding the launch, media attention rose tenfold$\unicode{x2014}$from already historically high levels. During this period, discourse has become increasingly centred around experts and political leaders, and AI has become more closely associated with dangers and risks. A deeper review of the data also suggests a qualitative shift in the types of threat AI is thought to represent, as well as the anthropomorphic qualities ascribed to it.