New report maps pros and cons of African media’s adoption of AI
A new report from IMS concludes that while newsrooms are increasingly adopting AI tools in their work, many African media are still struggling to use AI to strengthen the production of public interest journalism.
This new IMS report is published amidst a frenzy of publicity about artificial intelligence (AI) caused by the emergence of ChatGPT and other similar “generative AI” technologies that can generate text, imagery, sound and data. But, as this report and IMS’ previous study on AI use by media in Latin America and Eastern Europe illustrate, AI has crept largely unnoticed into the workstreams of journalists and their media operations over many years.
While more and more media on the African continent are using AI as part of their work, especially in content production and in understanding audience behaviour, the report shows that African media outlets are often struggling to integrate new tools and use them to their advantage. One challenge here is for media to identify and retain people with the needed technological skills.
The report also shows how the technological changes caused by AI are raising difficult dilemmas among media on the African continent:
“The moral panic around AI is huge right now across the world. We have been here before. So many technologies have immersed themselves into our work practice. Fortunately, they have found ways to work with us, somehow learnt to co-exist with us. We should be in a space where we co-exist with AI as a tool and actor coming into our work practices. That should be the conversation,” professor Admire Mare, a Zimbabwean academic and one of the report’s authors said.
The report also highlights an issue of bias linked to AI tools. In Africa, AI’s biases – caused largely by the lack of African data used for training AI tools – are much more pronounced, and the potential for AI to further widen the digital divide is all too apparent.
At the same time, the report points to a gender bias within AI. Research shows that women often don’t have the same access to technological tools due to inadequate infrastructure, affordability, availability, language barriers, illiteracy and even discriminatory social norms. For this reason, the report argues that there must be a specific focus on women through several approaches including targeted digital training and collaboration with organisations such as Women in News, a media development program of World Association of News Publishers (WAN-IFRA).
This report is part of IMS’ efforts in helping partners harnessing AI’s potential and mitigate its challenges.
Firstly, IMS conducts research – such as the study behind this report – to surface those opportunities and challenges, along with examples of media’s use of AI in a particular region. Secondly, IMS will bring together researchers, journalists, editors, fact checkers, media entrepreneurs and technologists, who unpack the research findings and further explore its context specific applications during workshops that aim to demystify AI and inspire considered steps towards using it to enhance public interest journalism.
Thirdly, IMS partners can apply to IMS’ AI Impact Fund for a small grant that buys them time, tools and expertise to experiment.
The study offers several recommendations including proposals on how international media development organisations can support African media in harnessing the potential of AI. This may include, supporting capacity building initiatives to address the knowledge and gender gaps, funding research and innovation including the development of local AI tools, and supporting and lobbying with other media actors for better AI policy and regulatory frameworks in the continent.
