Without question, the launch of ChatGPT in late November 2022 accelerated the current global AI boom, reshaping every sector, including the media industry. From students to scientists, doctors to mechanics, everyone could now wield a piece of what it offered.
Journalists, fact-checkers, researchers and broadcasters have all found some value in its use. However, for this class of users, rapid adoption raises dual concerns and questions first about protecting the very tenets of research, verification, and reporting, which hinge largely on ethical standards to ensure accuracy, independence, and accountability. Second is their watchdog role in ensuring AI use does not further amplify misinformation and disinformation for the audiences they serve.
The media is often described as the “backbone of democracy,” a “fourth estate of the realm” that informs citizens, fosters public debate, and holds power accountable, including big tech actors with respect to responsible AI development and use, among other things. Professions like journalism have to constantly weigh the question: what is responsible AI use, generally for audience use cases but also specifically within the profession itself? How can journalism effectively watchdog big tech if its own outputs are driven by the tools AI supplies?
Several media organisations are attempting to find answers to this question while navigating the constant shifting sands of the AI bubble. The Council of Media and Ethics of Macedonia’s guide for responsible and ethical AI use in Journalism, among its core tenets, emphasizes the great need for transparency in AI-generated content and full editorial accountability. The rule explicitly warrants mandatory labelling of Generative AI content integrated to support whatever part of the journalism work.
Academic experts argue that the integration of AI technologies in a professional authority such as journalism should be supervised in a manner that ensures there are guidelines that align AI with ethical codes. They acknowledge the tremendous benefits of AI supporting media work, most importantly, its help in addressing modern challenges such as data overload, content generation, and misinformation, empowering verification and monitoring, But they maintain that AI technologies are tested to ensure the necessary workflow fit; and that AI is assessed to understand the capabilities and limitations. .
In the Global North, The European Union (EU) AI Act is the most significant legally binding framework for cross-sectoral institutions, including newsrooms. However, media outlets, such as Reuters, the New York Times, and the Guardian (UK), have also set and enforced AI guidelines for their operations.
In African newsrooms, guidelines on media AI adoption are still evolving, with conversations around ethical AI adoption and media integrity gaining momentum. This state of flux with regards to newsrooms’ AI adoption presents both a challenge and an opportunity: the challenge lies in ensuring that the rapid adoption of AI tools by journalists does not outpace the necessary ethical and regulatory safeguards; and the opportunity lies in crafting guidelines that are contextually relevant to the specific socio-political and media landscapes of African media, learning from the early experiences and potential pitfalls observed with news organisations in the Global North.
As news media stakeholders continue to grapple with finding clear answers and defining clear rules of engagement for the adoption of AI in their newsrooms, several media organisations are building made-to-fit, AI-powered tools that respond to clear use cases within their practice and local contexts. These tools are built with local data and are scalable for both local and global audiences.
At the forefront of these indigenous developments are tools designed to help journalists connect the dots and maintain information integrity, overcome language diversity issues, bridge the data gap, and tell stories more efficiently.
Tools Spotlight
- MyAIFactChecker: The MyAIFactChecker tool empowers users to access accurate information swiftly. Developed by the Brain Builders Youth Development Initiative through its Nigerian fact-checking arm, FactCheckAfrica, this AI-powered platform enables journalists and the public to verify claims and counter misinformation effectively. MyAIFactChecker not only enhances fact-checking during critical events like elections and public health crises but also allows users to report false information, providing journalists with essential insights and alerts about emerging false narratives. This proactive approach helps maintain the integrity of information and supports responsible journalism in an increasingly complex media landscape.
- Verification and Claim Reporting Chatbot: The Dubawa WhatsApp Chatbot gives users access to current, verified data to counter misinformation. This platform also allows users to report potential misinformation, providing journalists with a critical early warning system for false narratives on the go. The tool leverages the rich database of fact-checks and real-time news from Dubawa and other institutions under the International Fact-checking Network (IFCN), as well as from reputable media outlets,
- Nubia.AI: Nubia is an AI-driven storytelling and data analysis tool designed to empower journalists and researchers in their pursuit of impactful narratives. By transforming complex data into clear, compelling stories, Nubia enhances the efficiency and effectiveness of investigative journalism. The platform supports a wide range of data formats, enabling users to upload various documents and media, which are then converted into structured insights. Nubia facilitates the creation of newsroom-grade articles, scripts, and visualizations, promoting data-driven storytelling that fosters transparency and accountability. With features that include automated story generation, smart visualizations, and customizable workflows, Nubia enables users to quickly identify key trends and insights from large datasets.
- The Dubawa Audio Platform: The Dubawa Audio Platform is a radio monitoring tool that uses AI to monitor, record, transcribe, and analyze audio shows in local dialects (like Nigerian English, Nigerian Pidgin, and Ghanaian English). This capability extracts claims and makes large volumes of audio content searchable, significantly aiding investigative journalism and monitoring. The key features of this tool include radio monitoring, audio transcription, claim extraction, and audio show scheduling. Together, they enhance the speed and efficiency of the verification process, archive and organize transcribed radio content for future reference.
- Know Your Leader: Know Your Leader is a political accountability tracker developed by the Centre for Journalism, Innovation and Development (CJID) that uses AI to centralize political candidates’ positions on key issues by noting their statements, tracking their public consistency over time, and providing journalists with clear data points for accountability reporting, especially during major elections which are often characterised by political tension driven by multiple agendas, especially in African countries like Nigeria.
- Podus AI: Podus AI is an AI-powered tool by Citizens Gavel to bridge the justice gap for indigent citizens, and can be very useful for media professionals. This tool provides legal and administrative assistance with regard to legal reporting. The tool offers key features such as automated legal guidance based on the Nigerian constitution, instant drafting of petitions and letters for government complaint centers, and a direct connection to pro bono lawyers for those in need of representation. For journalists and researchers, it serves as a powerful investigative tool capable of data mining to uncover patterns in large legal datasets, drafting FOI requests to ensure they meet legal standards, and access to rapid legal research to verify rights or precedents. The tool is accessible primarily through WhatsApp and available in Pidgin English.
These tools demonstrate the many possibilities of locally built AI tools when designed to serve a clear purpose and solve specific problems within the news media ecosystem. Effectively harnessed, these tools can help journalists, media researchers, factcheckers, etc., to better serve their mission and audience without jeopardising core journalistic values.
In terms of accessibility and integration, these AI tools are mobile-friendly, downloadable, and available on existing mobile applications. AI tools such as the MyAIFactchecker, Podus AI, and Dubawa Chatbot are integrated into WhatsApp. Know Your Leader and Dubawa Audio are accessible via the Chrome browser on both mobile and computer systems.
While the profession continues to find answers to the many concerns around responsible AI use and its ethics, journalism appears to have adopted a positively cautious outlook by experimenting with made-for-us-by-us tools that already integrate transparency and alignment with core journalistic ethics. These tools elevate the quality of journalism and put the profession on the front foot with regard to the sweeping transformation AI is bringing to all facets of human endeavours.
