  The tremendous rise of generative AI has reached every part of society -
including the news environment. There are many concerns about the individual
and societal impact of the increasing use of generative AI, including issues
such as disinformation and misinformation, discrimination, and the promotion of
social tensions. However, research on anticipating the impact of generative AI
is still in its infancy and mostly limited to the views of technology
developers and/or researchers. In this paper, we aim to broaden the perspective
and capture the expectations of three stakeholder groups (news consumers;
technology developers; content creators) about the potential negative impacts
of generative AI, as well as mitigation strategies to address these.
Methodologically, we apply scenario writing and use participatory foresight in
the context of a survey (n=119) to delve into cognitively diverse imaginations
of the future. We qualitatively analyze the scenarios using thematic analysis
to systematically map potential impacts of generative AI on the news
environment, potential mitigation strategies, and the role of stakeholders in
causing and mitigating these impacts. In addition, we measure respondents'
opinions on a specific mitigation strategy, namely transparency obligations as
suggested in Article 52 of the draft EU AI Act. We compare the results across
different stakeholder groups and elaborate on the (non-) presence of different
expected impacts across these groups. We conclude by discussing the usefulness
of scenario-writing and participatory foresight as a toolbox for generative AI
impact assessment.
