The Asian College of Journalism has included a four-week intensive module on Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Journalism in November-December 2024. This module was handled by visiting experts, academics and practitioners from Scandinavia and India.
The main objective was to equip students not only with the skills to use cutting-edge AI tools as aids to improve efficiency or reduce mechanical work but also to impart knowledge to understand AI and look at it through an informed, critical lens.
The inaugural lecture was delivered by Professor Charlie Beckett, Professor of Practice, Director of Polis and the Polis/LSE JournalismAI project, Department of Media and Communications, the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). He outlined the importance of AI in journalism and cautioned about the risks that need to be factored in.
Carl-Gustav Lindén, professor of data journalism at University of Bergen (UiB) in Norway, led a team of academics and journalism practitioners who explained various aspects of artificial intelligence in journalism and conducted practical, hands-on workshops on using cutting-edge AI tools relevant to journalism use cases. Journalist Patrik Syk, who has been a part of the task force in the Swedish daily newspaper Aftonbladet for creating Generative AI-driven tools and products, conducted workshops on prompt engineering, script for text-to-speech synthesis, chatbots and augmented journalism. Walid Al-Saqaf, associate professor at both the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies and Södertörn University in Sweden, conducted workshops on fact-checking and image verification and data analysis.
Carl-Gustav Linden delivered informative and thought-provoking lectures on risk management in the context of AI in Journalism, importance of augmented journalism, and the new Landscape of Disinformation. Drawing on his presentations, students made presentations on Risk management in Journalism AI. As part of the module, Prof Linden also moderated a panel discussion on AI in Indian newsrooms. Dhanya Rajendran, editor, Newsminute; Sannuta Raghu, executive producer, Scroll; and Ritvvij Parrikh of Times Internet participated in the discussion.
Malin Picha Edwardsson, who holds a PhD in Media Technology and is senior lecturer in Journalism at Södertörn University in Stockholm, Sweden, delivered an insightful lecture on innovation and emerging technologies.
Devadas Rajaram, who teaches Multimedia Storytelling, AI and Prompt Engineering at Alliance University, Bengaluru, conducted a 5-day workshop on the Integration of Generative AI in Newsrooms. Students learned prompt engineering for multiplatform content creation. Besides using AI for text, he also demonstrated how AI could be used for audio and video storytelling (news podcasts and videos).
Dr. R Ramanujam, a researcher who was at the Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Chennai, until 2021 and is currently Visiting Professor at Azim Premji University, Bengaluru and Tsinghua University, Beijing, delivered a series of lectures on the science behind AI. He also explained the socio-political implications of AI, in particular questions on regulation and impact on labour.
Sriram Srinivasan, journalist-turned-digital consultant; Sweden-based Lakshmi Sivadas, senior programme manager at LSE’s JournalismAI project; Abhishek Prasad, founder of AI platform for journalism practice Rytstory.com, delivered lectures focusing on AI in newsrooms, ethical dilemmas and impact on Intellectual Property, human creativity and agency. Film industry professional Aarthi Videep delivered an engaging session on ‘AI in Cinema – From Script to Screen’.
As part of the module, students made two presentations – one, on risk management in deploying AI in newsrooms, and two, application of AI in various domains.
The key takeaways of the module were:
The skills taught through a series of workshops related to present and future newsroom use cases included:
There were detailed interactive sessions and discussions on pitfalls and perils of AI (including misinformation, inherent gender, racial and other biases, creation of silos and bubbles, socio-political polarisation, abuse of AI for political and other propaganda, to name a few)
In the beginning of the academic year, ACJ faculty members underwent a week-long orientation session on AI in journalism, and at the end of it the faculty members collectively put together an AI code of practice. The expert sessions during the present AI module did validate the ACJ’s AI code of practice.