LLMs can get up to date information from primary sources - no journalists required.

I don't understand how LLMs can ask questions at a press conference.

To begin with, your premise is that the only primary sources are press conferences and that press conferences only provide information in response to questions.

But even taking it literally, isn't that one of the things LLMs could actually do? You're essentially asking how a text generator could generate text. The real question is whether the questions would be any good, but the answer isn't necessarily no.

I'm sure any competent agent would send an email, or just ask as an aside in a chat.

Startup idea right there.

I don't think an LLM can have secret human sources that provide them with confidential information anonymously. Not all news shows up on Twitter.

You don't need the secret human sources any more.

You used to need them, because journalists had the distribution and the sources didn't. In a word of printed newspapers, you couldn't get your story distributed nationally (much less worldwide) without the help of a journalist, doubly so if you wanted to stay anonymous.

Nowadays, you just make a Substack and there's that.

See that recent expose on the Delve fraud as just one example. No journalists were harmed in the making of that article.

This is technically trivial. Most data comes froms chats these days, not the web.

Start thinking!

The primary source for most news is journalism.

In context, primary source means the subject of the article (the thing the journalist is writing about).

Journalism is by definition a secondary source. (Notwithstanding edge cases like articles reporting directly on the news industry itself.)

Journalism is absolutely not by definiton a secondary source.

If a journalist is on location covering a flood, for example, they are the primary source.

A journalist conducting an interview would also be a primary source.

Primary sources can and often are, very biased. Journalists are (supposed to be) doing fact checks and gathering multiple sources from all sides. Modern journalism is in a terrible state, but still important.

Imagine if all info about Facebook came from Facebook...