Media literacy in the age of AI

[Music] hi great to see you all I'm David Mayer I'm uh the author of Fortune's data sheet technology newsletter please all sign up and uh my life has just become all about AI recently which is a shift I think we can see uh represented here at the scheduled web Summit and what is it doing to our industry I ask uh we have some uh of the top figures uh of the credible media I would say who must struggle with the the the Carnage that AI is going to be wreaking um slightly overd dramatizing things um

Julie let's start with you before we get to the issue of what the news consumer should look out for what are you doing within Associated Press uh about AI is it something you're approaching very cautiously is it something you're embracing where are you at I would say we're somewhere in the middle I mean one of the things I always remind people uh within the AP but also externally as well is that we've actually been working with AI AT AP for about 10 years now it's not the generative AI that we're all talking about right now

but it has been for things that have been really positive for our journalists things like being able to automate stock tables and sports reports and freeing up journalists to do more ambitious work that really requires a human being to be uh you know at the helm there so we have a great example over the last decade of being able to use Ai and not cut jobs which is the big thing that I think a lot of journalists are are Fe fearful of I do think we're in a phase right now though where the technology is

so much more advanced that I think we're having to have a lot of internal conversations about how we create literacy within our own news organization about knowing what the technology is capable of how to spot what the technology is is creating you know we can't inform our audiences about what's real and what's not about what to look for unless we know how to do that internally as well and so a lot of what we've been doing over these last couple of months is really developing internal Frameworks internal standards sharing them with the rest of the

industry because we think that's an important role for the AP to play here to to set those standards for the rest of the industry and the response has been really positive because I think one of the things I'm pleased about is that you do see the media largely right now I think saying we have to be part of this conversation you know we can't let this all wash over us we have to help try to drive and dictate where this goes but again that starts with creating that literacy inside our own organization Andia well as

a newsroom I think the question that we ask ourselves at the Thompson Raiders foundation and is um how do we add meaningfully to the conversation about generative AI that is happening right now within our audience of and we have a very specific audience our audience is purpose serven professionals so people who work in policy who work in government who work at the uni United Nations diplomacy Academia and our conversation internally is how to tap into that how to speak to those people and add meaningfully to the conversation that they're already having so for instance one

of our first stories on AI that we did this year was what is AI and is it going to take away my job and that is a that is a big question that a lot of you know people within our audience had been asking from there you know our sort of focus is um telling the stories of people at the sharp end of policies or phenomenon like uh like climate change for instance and so we have centered our coverage around how is this whole sort of burgeoning of generative Ai and This Global Discovery of the

things that it can do um how does it impact Ordinary People um last year with did this amazing investigation our our correspondent in in San Francisco AI Shapiro about large language models being used in the American prison system to surveil prisoners and people who came to visit them and so what we are doing is is keeping while keeping an eye on on um you know the development of AI and also um we are also tapping into where is it being used in ways that um require accountability um and so that's been sort of the focus

of our coverage in digital rights data privacy surveillance um you know socio economic inequality that AI would create um the coders for instance who were uh paid exploitative rates to to program AI engines so that's that's where our focus is it's an interesting point and before we get to the the media literacy side do you think that the amount of coverage of AI uh or do you think that the tone of the coverage of AI at the moment is tends to be negative because uh it feels like a bit of a Counterpoint perhaps to the

boosterism on the other side not necessarily I think I don't know in your experience but there there are there's among our readers I think AI is a topic of conversation because people know very little about it uh and those who do know about it are are are on both sides of the Divide there are people there are those who are using it for nefarious purposes but then there are also those who are using it for things like climate modeling uh or um crunching large amounts of data to pull out you know data journalists using you

know uh using AI to Crunch data to pull out stories that they wouldn't otherwise otherwise be able to tell so I don't think the coverage of AI has been negative I know my Twitter feed or my X feed is inundated with here's how you can use AI to do this and here and so that I rolled my eyes at but um I don't think the conversations have have fallen on any one side and I think you know AI coverage is not one thing it's coverage of the technology but it's coverage of you know governments and

regulations it's cover coverage of positive use cases and negative use cases I mean it's so wide ranging right now that I think you know one of the things we've been talking about internally is how do we make sure that AI is kind of part of every coverage area that we have we see stories coming up from sports and entertainment you know if you look at the Hollywood strikes that's been a lot about what's the risks of AI could be so I don't think there's sort of any one area where you can you can sort of

pigeon hole it and I think we all have to become internal experts in order to have it infused throughout the coverage just like climate change right like climate change is now part if you pick up a newspaper climate change is on the front page climate change is on the finance pages on the real estate Pages the comic section and the crossword and I think AI is it permeating in that in that way except we've lived with the climate change conversation for a very very long time we've just started having the AI conversation at a popular

level and so I think that's you know it it's it's smart to look at those opportunities where can we have an AI conversation that really matters in in our coverage uh one of the the themes that's been running through this entire conference so far has been that of trust and AI uh are you feeling that I mean you're a two extremely um wellestablished authoritative um organizations are you feeling that a lack of trust bleeding through uh as as far as you so far or not so far which is good but I think look I think

this is where you know as a media organization you say okay that's our place then right I mean we have to maintain that trusted position because I think what we we are going to see even though I I do believe that there are really positive use cases for generative AI both in the media industry and and outside we are going to see more misinformation as we just are there there's no way around it and so I think we as a news organization have to say you know our role is to be able to provide you

trusted accurate real information and holding to that position making sure that we don't do anything that that knocks us off of that position I think becomes more essential than ever and also hopefully again as we build kind of that internal literacy around AI being that place that can also be a clearing house when something significant happens that is AI generated misinformation we want to be able to tell you not just that it's misinformation or that it's it's you know a false creation why how we know it being able to be transparent about that I think

will be really really crucial um at at Thompson Reuters and by extension at the Thompson Reuters Foundation we have these things called the trust principles which is Independence inte integrity and freedom from bias and I think the brand has sort of held on to those and exhibited those consistently over a very long period of time to the point where the brand recognition uh for you know trusted information is there I mean people make major economic and financial decisions based on you know Thomson reuter's info right uh so there's that but I was speaking to you

know our team recently uh about the trust principles uh because we we talk about them frequently and you know and I and I was saying to them that there once a weapon and a shield where they they protect us from even the suspicion of of of going Wayward on on a on something and and they they have established trust within our audiences about we will triple quadruple check things before we tell it to you uh and at the same time a weapon as in you know we can you know with that truthful Fair accurate independent

information we can affect a lot of impact in the world right and so I think in that sense folks like you guys and we because of a history of of of of doing things in in a certain way H are shielded from a lot of a lot of the Flack I do worry about the smaller news rooms um you know I was about to come to that uh because they a don't have the brand recognition B um they don't have systems in place that you know help them do that kind of due diligence on a

photograph or a piece of video or you know a piece of text and and I do worry about those guys and this is actually one of the things that we're working on particularly in the United States is trying to help local newsrooms we have a local AI initiative because I think you're so right I mean if we're struggling as large you know wellestablished news organizations how are local news organizations going to be able to get their arms around this so we're trying to actually partner with them help them with the tools but also help them

find the ways that they can use the technology I mean if you're in a small local Newsroom anywhere in the world you're probably going through a staffing shortage you're probably you probably have fewer journalists than you used to can you you use the technology to actually fill some of those gaps I think that's a again a really positive part of this conversation that we should be having but we're seeing not just a shift uh that we saw with social media perhaps where uh it simply uh went to smaller news organizations being able to get their

their their their names out there um but we're now seeing individuals becoming news organizations in their own right uh I I was just chatting to a Tik tocker who's a Tik Tok news reader and I'll be honest six months ago I didn't even know that was a thing and I'm still struggling to get my head around it but there's a whole generation that is consuming their news this way uh people in that position would perhaps find it uh a lot easier as a oneperson operation to employ AI I mean what what advice would you give

to smaller news organizations and even individuals um who want to have some of that Authority that your organizations have spent years building how do you do it the same advice I would give to journalists in our our Newsroom make sure you get it right uh make sure you get it right because uh a reputation is something that is easier to acquire and difficult to shake so uh if you want to survive as a Tik Tok uh you know news presenter and and a journalist that's totally fine you can do that there's 3.5 billion people on

the internet all I want is 100 million so you know you can have the rest but make sure you get it right because that's where that's where you don't want to screw up yeah I agree with that I think that uh you know I'm very supportive I think we all you know should be supportive of you know individual creators being able to have a platform and personally you know I've used that to find stories angles that maybe were not reflecting you know if there's a big audience for a certain story or a certain topic and

it's not part of our news report then we're not actually meeting the needs of our audiences right because we have such a broad audience so I think it's been a great uh kind of tool for us to see where the conversation is going but as an individual Creator as a smaller Outlet you know I I I I wouldn't say that you could replicate the uh the reput reputation of a large established news organization you also shouldn't try I mean that's not your goal is to try to kind of recreate what we have at reuter at

Thompson Reuters or or at the AP but it just comes down to trust with the audience that you do have that is the most essential thing and so if you can use AI or any new technology to help you further that trust amazing but if you use it in a way that's going to erode that they're really I think to your point there's really not a way to get that back then yeah yeah there was recently uh just last week I think a scandal with uh an image that was generated uh by adobe's IM image

generator uh purporting to show an explosion over Gaza and it was AI generated it was nonsense but it got picked up by a lot of smaller news organizations um people will have seen that they will have seen the Fallout from that do you think we're going to enter a real crisis of trust that people simply don't believe anything they see well you know a long time ago and and by a long time I mean about a decade ago I had a conversation with my dad about sharing misinformation on the family WhatsApp group um and I

and and I and I said to him dad you know you're a journalist's father uh you need to consider what you're doing and my dad something said something really interesting to me he said you know what when we were growing up it took a lot of effort and factchecking and you know thing took a lot of doing to get something published with this level of production value so when it got to us looking beautiful on glossy paper we believed it because it had gone through so many hands that were trustworthy uh but now you know

the user interface of even a disinformation website is spectacular so I think um yes I do worry about it but I think as you know as large news organizations we I think we have the capacity to build those defenses to build those so to acquire people with the skill set who can who can be that intermediary where something comes in and you verify and also look we we are blessed to be large enough that we have our own people doing the work so we would much rather prefer publishing what we generate as opposed to user

generated content which is so dicey is so dicey and you can't can no longer get away with the the disclaimer we could not independently verify this you can now right you can't you have ENT uh capabilities that you can use to verify load of things so I think um I'm less worried about that and I'm more worried about what are we teaching our cons what what are our consumers learning outside of watching the news right like about how to consume the news about how to be critical consumers of the news I was reading my daughter's

textbooks and there's really very little in there about being a Savvy news consumer and she's the daughter of a journalist and a PR strategist she needs to know and so so so I think I would treat media literacy and literacy especially about Ai and disinformation as a public education and a public health issue where it is up it should be up to governments and policy makers to think about to really think about what are we teaching the kids in high schools and elementary schools so that they grow into Savvy consumers of uh of of the

news I agree with that because I think you know we are talking a lot about what we can do to be transparent to be able to say this is why this photo that we've taken in is legitimate because we can prove that there was a photographer behind it who was in this location here's a little bit about them and here's here's the other work that they've been doing from the space so you can okay fine you can trust that this is a real image generated by an AP journalist what I can't do though is make

sure that the person on the receiving end of that information is taking the time to say how do I know that's real and that's not right arming people with the tools to be able to make those decisions themselves on where they're going to get their information what questions they're going to ask what sources they're going to seek out we have a role in providing that information to people and educating them about this then there is that public responsibility aspect and I think that's really important and I think sometimes we don't talk enough about the responsibility

of the news consumer to make sure that they're making good smart educated choices about where they're getting their information but we can play a role in helping make sure that again they have that toolkit at their disposal and I think and I think educating the public from a very very very young age on being better consumers of news just builds better societies and Mak societies probably that are immune to a lot of the disinformation because they are they're smart consumers of news and I think this need how to how to how to watch television is

just as much of a skill as how to make television sometimes I mean we're at a point at the moment where you could still go well actually 6 months ago you could still go look at the hands are the fingers the right length are there enough fing Etc um already that's taken care of uh in most cases with the latest image generator versions um let's just take it as red that in a in a year's time it will be indistinguishable do you think we're going to have to turn to AI to prove that something is

AI or disprove it and is that going to have to be part of media liter media literacy it's a great question do you use AI to police AI right I mean and I think there are other players involved in this too I mean I think that we also have to be honest about what our limitations as a news industry and and what our responsibilities here are right I mean I think there are certainly roles for the tech companies the social platforms you know for who who could be providing the platform for this information to be

spread I mean there are all kinds of conversations happening right now around watermarks and you know other kind of visible uh you know signs on on imagery uh you know to say this is real and this is not and to to block what gets pushed forward and what gets downplayed based on algorithms and I think those conversations are you know as best I can tell you know somewhat in their infancy right now though they're going to have to move a little bit faster to keep up with to your point I think where this technology is

going to go I think this is a really cool time where these sorts of conversations are happening about regulation about you know uh policymaking around you know uh good use of AI and criminal use of AI and how those can be enforced I don't think it's just the news industry that's going through law enforcement is going through this politicians are going through this policy makers are going through this so it you can look at it two ways you can look at it as a time where there's just a lot of chaos or you look you

can look at it as a time where we're having consequential interesting super cool conversations that are going to lead to you know better ways of dealing with a tool that we've just begun to understand as a society not as an industry like you said you know we've been using AI for other things for a long time but as a society it's so new to us and so strange but you know it's an adventure i' I've got a small daughter and I was recently thinking it actually makes me a bit sad that I'm going to have

to teach her at some point to not trust what she sees uh on on on First Sight do you think that's where we're going hey Malcolm X said that long time before I was born that you don't believe everything you read in the newspapers right so that was always a good rule is to is to be a Savvy consumer of thing of of the media um I I will I will do as a journalist I will do the best that I can to give you the most accurate fair and independent U information as I can

it's still up to you to decide whether you're not or not you're going to take it and if you're a Savvy consumer you will see what I've done and you will you will make your decision but you know you should you should always you know approach newspapers and television channels and websites and and journalism were critical ey because we do that on our end as as journalists so why not you as as as a consumer of what we make yeah I worry about it when you're looking at a Tik Tok you're looking at a you

know scrolling through Tik Tok things and here's some serious news here's some entertainment here's some serious news um are people that's the question as a news consumer I mean you can say yes you can put responsibility on them but do you think that people really care these days I know that's a horrible thing to ask and it hurs I'm Hur myself J I'm hurting myself but do you think that do you have faith in the Young Generation coming through that that is what they want they want the truth really I I actually do I mean

I think that one of the kind of interesting um dynamics that you've seen with uh Tik Tok and with Instagram and some of these other platforms that have emerged for younger audiences is I mean there there are a couple things I would point to one you've seen a bit of a backlash against accounts that are really solely driven by kind of product placement right when there's a sort of a a clear Financial motivation behind the person whose whose account that is you've seen sort of a turnabout there which I think is gets to kind of

trust and Independence which I think is really positive um but again I ALS I also think about the positive of why people have gravitated toward some ticktockers or kind of social media uh you know influencers who are focused in doing kind of reporting and real news it's because they see themselves in that coverage right they think the perspective represents what they're after more than what they've seen in traditional media and to me that is still people seeking information still people seeking accurate information still people people wanting to go out and find out what's happening in

the world but you know it's a challenge for us to say how do we make them see themselves and their perspective in what we're doing I think there's a I really do think there's a link there I don't think it has to be one one or the other choice here you're absolutely right I I think Millennials and jenz and folks younger than they are are way smarter than us uh I mean think of it we've really screwed up the world um my parents not me uh and they're the ones who are tasked with fixing it

they have to be way smarter than us in order to do that and um I have no choice but to be optimistic about them being being better news consumers than we are um again like you know my dad sh shares disinformation on the family WhatsApp group there is not a single genzi cousin or friend or uh co-worker who has done that they are a lot more critical uh of consuming information than we are but also I I also think um the rise in the consumption of Tik Tok and and and all these platforms that younger

people are using is forcing us as news organizations to be better um to to to sort of overcome a certain level of skepticism that we haven't encountered before and also speak to people in a lang meet people where they are on the platforms that they are on and speak to them in a language that they speak to each other and I think that is the way to do it uh I think sort of you know wouldn't we be replicating our our parents mistakes if we said ah these young people there on Tik Tok we're we're

gone we're lost you know they're never they're never they're never going to be as you know as smart of a news consumer as as we were it's totally not the case they're way smarter than we are well that's a positive note to end on thank you so much thank thank you and thanks everybody thank you thank you