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In this special edition, Ryan Powell, IPI Head of Innovation and Media Business, shares his takeaways from Breaking the News: DW Akademie’s global event series on journalism in the age of AI that took place in Berlin this January.
What if consumers no longer visit websites directly for verified information or consult news properties, letting LLM queries solve their immediate problems? Perhaps it’s the world we’re already in. Last week, media builders, technologists, advocates and regulators from 50 countries came together in Berlin by DW Akademie to debate whether or not AI is breaking journalism.
By collecting ideas from different sectors and regions, the objective was to illuminate a path forward – where and how these different stakeholders can focus their energy in impactful ways to improve the quality of information online, ensuring journalism is part of that matrix.
Two leading questions by the event organizers hit home for IPI’s work:
- How can we make sure AI content is accurate and accountable?
- How can we empower audiences to understand AI?
It’s good timing, as we are in the midst of launching our first accelerator for AI adoption in global majority countries. Indeed, we assert that innovation and experimentation are critical to the process of upholding human-made journalism as a guarantor of truth in the public interest.
The debate swung along the pendulum of technical solutions to critiquing the consolidation of power by Big Tech and appealing for regulation. What struck me most was that we have the tools we need, but lack coordination within the industry and the political currency to deliver on the promise of quality information in society.
More directly, Courtney Radtsch of the Open Markets Institute asserted that journalism is a “keystone species” in the information ecosystem. Radtsch noted that OpenAI “strip-mined the public sphere” for training data, and that GenAI is not politically neutral, including examples from platforms like Grok in South Africa, X supporting AFD in Germany and training data being flooded with information operations.
The point is that for business exchanges to work, for people to trust institutions like elections, or to navigate crises, you need quality journalism. Radtsch asked: “Could we have had the Arab Spring with current levels of online disbelief?”
What are the risks for media and society?
The biggest risk might be that our information ecosystems just can’t survive the extractive economics of Big Tech forever. For journalism, trust amongst audiences becomes paramount, and this may be linked to brand recognition. But that trust is collapsing as deepfakes flood online spaces and finding true information gets harder and harder. At the same time, users are asking legitimate questions about their data: how is it being used, do they get any say in that, and what control do they actually have over it?
Media companies are facing an inherently challenging landscape. Still, the industry has to adapt, even as multistakeholder groups like this push for more research and regulation. One of the biggest fights right now is over data itself: who’s consolidating it, at what price, and at whose expense.
So, what can you actually do about all this, based on insights from the event?
- Start experimenting with C2PA, it’s a framework for proving where content comes from and whether it’s authentic.
- Check out the advocacy work happening in groups like AlgorithmWatch, Factum, or the International Press Telecommunications Council to see what’s being pushed for at the policy level.
- If you’re in media and trying to figure out how to deal with LLMs, look into existing associations or collective bargaining efforts rather than going it alone.
- You should also be anticipating risk: test out multiple revenue streams and make sure users can move their data around (portability), as social platforms are only getting less predictable.
- Experiment with alternative platforms like the Fediverse: there’s no time like the present to start building on new, durable infrastructure that meets your goals long term.
A few ideas stuck with me:
- The Brazilian government designed and funded an incubator for tech solutions in media, seed-funding infrastructure ideas that could serve journalism and the quality of information in the public sphere.
- Professor Natalia Helberger from the University of Amsterdam made the point: we need to “stop regulating over the head of citizens.”
- That connects to a bigger question about agency. How do audiences maintain any control when their consumption of news and content keeps getting more passive?
- Can media and technology actually improve user choice and make it a real cornerstone of democracy, such as letting people opt out of synthetic content or incentivizing alternative infrastructure?
- Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s idea of “pragmatism with principles” in this new world order, cued up by the Reuters Institute’s Madhav Chinnappa, calling for a “NATO for News.”
- We need to design real accountability into the supply chain for information—treat it like the infrastructure it actually is.