Machine learning and artificial intelligence are increasingly finding a place in the media industry, yet such tools are still struggling to break into the mainstream. Media organisations must ensure their teams keep pace with these industry innovations, or they risk falling behind the pace of the digital revolution.
Regulators and social media platforms alike seem to have, albeit belatedly, caught up with the challenge of tackling the misinformation and ‘fake news’ running rampant across the Web. In a key breakthrough, comprehensive regulation to address the issue was recently adopted in Europe. But social media platforms are still keen on keeping the watchdogs at arms-length and, instead, prefer to police their own content.
Despite Facebook’s own culpability for allowing the spread of unreliable online content, it also offers some cause for optimism. Meta, the social network’s parent company, is betting that its latest AI-powered tool, Sphere, will put up the good fight against misinformation, having skimmed through 134 million public webpages, including Wikipedia.
A handful of AI-powered tools, such as the image verification software developed by Google’s incubator Jigsaw, have also been adopted by news organisations around the world. But for all the optimism, mainstream adoption has been lacklustre. The reasons for this are varied (such as the failure of JanetBot and similar AI tools), but it begs the question of whether media organisations are really invested in getting ahead of the curve.
Bringing it into the mainstream
They should be. Accelerated digital adoption is one of the most effective ways to ensure that traditional news and media organisations can remain trustworthy and relevant. Yet the simple reality is that journalists are often not in a place to keep pace with digital innovations such as AI. Across the newsroom, from reporters to editors and directors, there is limited capacity to explore the latest solutions and simultaneously perform the functions of a day job even if it could potentially ease workloads and enhance the credibility of news output.
In the UK, the London School of Economics (LSE), through its JournalismAI initiative, is lifting the burden of digital adoption from the shoulders of journalists. LSE is making the potential of AI more accessible worldwide by providing fellowships for exploring AI tools and organising academies to upskill journalists.
Similarly, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is actively seeking to engage learners in an increasingly AI-powered society and its Responsible AI for Social Empowerment and Education (RAISE) initiative is proving popular with media professionals.
Some news organisations are nonetheless carving out the space to lead this change, both from within and in partnership with academia. The Emirates News Agency (WAM) recently entered into a strategic partnership with the Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence (MBZUAI). Their collaboration, in advance of November’s Global Media Congress, will directly focus on cooperation between media and AI, with dedicated seats for WAM staff on MBZUAI’s Executive Programme, and the planned establishment of an in-house WAM AI Lab.
Beyond fact-checking
These organisations and institutions recognise that the application of AI in the media extends far beyond fact-checking and strengthening trustworthiness. With the right development and buy-in, its benefits to news organisations will include the reduction of variable costs on transcription, rapid and improved image tagging, and turbocharging outlets’ reporting capacity.
The key to AI’s success in the media sphere will be ensuring it is reliably bias-free. Spotting spurious claims, verifying a multitude of sources, making accurate assessments with respect to truth, or accurately reporting on a breaking story is no mean feat. Such judgement relies on complex concepts, often going far beyond just semantics. The fact that AI requires extensive input and effort to get right is an understandable barrier to progress.
So, what can be done in the meantime? For as long as we do not have machine-based solutions that guarantee sophisticated understanding of text sources, news organisations and social media will continue to rely firstly on human judgement. It would be complacent and short-sighted, however, to stick with this modus operandi.
The media industry needs to take responsibility for accelerating the adoption of cutting-edge digital technology. And a significant part of this will be upskilling journalists when it comes to AI. Ultimately, it is through reporters the boots on the ground and the editors who oversee them that news organisations will then show AI into the mainstream, and improve their prospects for long-term success.
