Abstract

AI has become (again) a matter of public interest, and it is crucial to investigate how the news media intervenes in the hype and publicity around AI in different countries. At the intersection between Media Studies and Science and Technology Studies (STS), this article examines portrayals of AI and related technologies in the Chilean news media. We curated a corpus of nearly 7000 AI-related news articles from 2008 to 2023 from four Chilean newspapers. We combined an LDA topic modelling with an analysis with dictionaries of the key actors and critical issues discussed around AI. The analysis shows the explosive growth of the media coverage of AI in recent years, as well as the diversity of topics associated with AI in Chile. We found a high prominence of topics related to industry and technology, a high visibility of international actors, mostly U.S. tech companies, and a low level of mentions of critical issues around AI. Moreover, we also discuss the low coverage of the State's AI use, the emergent use of generative AI in tech journalism, and the prominence of topics such as the arts and humanities that appear as emerging spaces for the problematisation of AI in Chile.