It appears that the artificial intelligence revolution has claimed another victim. This time, it isn’t just a factory worker’s job or a student’s ability to write an essay without cheating. No, this time the victim is an entire continent’s version of the truth. According to new **University of Sydney research**, **Microsoft’s Copilot AI** has decided that **Australian journalism** is simply not worth the indexing effort.

Let us look at the metrics, as painful as they are. Researchers at the University of Sydney—brave souls grappling with the black box of **AI-generated news summaries**—decided to test how well this “smart” AI handles news from Down Under. The results were exactly as depressing as you might expect. Dr. Timothy Koskie, a researcher from the university’s Centre for AI, Trust and Governance, found that Australian journalism is largely “invisible” to the machine.

When users leverage **Microsoft Copilot** for news about Australia, you would assume the robot would look for answers from, well, Australia. That would optimize user intent. That would be logical. But we do not live in a logical world; we live in a digital circus run by Silicon Valley. Instead of linking to local Australian newspapers or TV stations, the AI overwhelmingly prefers to send users to media outlets in the United States or Europe.

Think about the absurdity of this for a moment. Imagine you are standing in Sydney, and you ask a digital assistant what is happening in your own city. Instead of asking the local reporter down the street, the robot flies across the ocean, asks a guy in New York what he thinks is happening in Sydney, and then flies back to tell you. It is a game of telephone played on a global scale, and the losers are the people who actually live there.

According to the study, only about one-fifth—that is 20 percent for those of you who struggle with math—of the AI’s responses actually linked back to Australian media sources. The rest? They were pulled from the big, loud American and European giants. This is what we call "digital colonialism." It is the tech world telling Australia, "You are not important enough to tell your own story. We will let the Americans tell it for you."

This is not just a funny glitch. It is a tragedy in slow motion. The experts are warning that this behavior by AI is likely to create more **news deserts**. Now, a news desert is not a place with sand and camels. It is a place where nobody knows what is going on because all the local newspapers have gone broke. If the AI refuses to send traffic to Australian websites, those websites make no money. If they make no money, they close down. If they close down, there is nobody left to report on the local corruption, the bad roads, or the crooked politicians.

The irony is rich enough to choke on. These tech companies constantly tell us that their tools are here to "connect the world" and "democratize information." They sell us the idea that AI is a neutral, super-smart librarian that knows everything. But in reality, the AI is just a lazy tourist. It goes to the biggest, loudest places—like the US media—and ignores everything else. It creates a feedback loop where the only voices that matter are the ones that are already rich and powerful.

Independent voices are being strangled. The research shows that this threatens the very viability of Australian journalism. If you are a small, independent reporter in Perth or Melbourne, you are fighting a losing battle. You are not just fighting for readers; you are fighting against an algorithm that has been programmed to ignore you. You are screaming into a void, and the robot in charge has its volume turned off.

We must also consider what this does to the public. If people rely on these **AI summaries** for their news—and sadly, many lazy people do—they are getting a warped view of reality. They are seeing their own country through the eyes of foreigners. It creates a distance between the citizen and the state, a fog where the truth is filtered through servers in California before it reaches the person it actually affects.

So, here we are. The University of Sydney has done the math, and the numbers are bleak. Microsoft’s Copilot is steering the ship, but it seems to have thrown the map of Australia overboard. We are moving toward a future where we all read the same five news stories, written by the same three companies, summarized by a robot that doesn't care if it gets the facts right.

It is enough to make you want to go back to reading print newspapers. At least when you held a paper in your hands, you knew where it came from. Now, we just stare at screens and let the machines decide what is true. And apparently, the truth is whatever the Americans say it is. Good luck, Australia. You are going to need it.

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### **REFERENCES & FACT-CHECK (E-E-A-T COMPLIANT)** * **Primary Source:** "Australian journalism ‘sidelined’ in AI-generated news summaries on Copilot, research shows" – *The Guardian* (Jan 25, 2026). [Read the original report here](https://www.theguardian.com/media/2026/jan/25/ai-generated-news-summaries-microsoft-copilot-australian-journalism). * **Key Data Point:** Research by Dr. Timothy Koskie (University of Sydney) indicates only ~20% of Microsoft Copilot's news links direct to Australian sources. * **Context:** This satire reflects ongoing concerns regarding **AI impact on journalism**, specifically the threat of creating **news deserts** by diverting traffic away from local publishers to global conglomerates.