AI Governance Framework: Orodata Science Calls For Responsible Artificial Intelligence Usage in Newsrooms, Advocates Guiding Policy
By Abisola Ariwodola,
To co-create a sustainable Al Governance Framework for the Media Sector that protects editorial independence and public trust, Orodata Science and the Africa Data Hub (ADH) has called on Journalists, and media organisations to responsibly use Artificial Intelligence tools in newsrooms as media professionals.
The workshop which charged journalists using AI tools to use it responsibly, urged them to avoid using it for plagiarism, misinformation, and disinformation among others.
This was disclosed by Experts who were panelists at the programme which held at Four Points Conference Hall, Victoria Island Lagos on Monday.
According to the media experts which include, Lekan Otunfodunrin: CEO Media Career Development Center, John Eromosele: Country Director Orodata, and Lady Ejiro Umokoro: Serial mediapreneur, Publisher, and author, with the advent of the Al revolution, it is imperative to ensure the transformative promise of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and its Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) which says, leave no one behind.
The Trio averred that AI should be used to enhance the media newsrooms, and urged journalists not to use copy and paste AI generated reports, but use it as an assistant in report writing.
Maintaining that there is need for government policy to guide AI usage by reporters in newsrooms, they added that the existing Ethics of Journalism will do justice in the framework, alongside the need to involve newsrooms management / leadership in the transition.
Speaking further, the trio cautioned newsrooms who are already using AI, to ensure that it is not risky and that they don’t deceive the audience with it, while clamouring to mediums which are yet to adopt AI usage in the newsroom to upgrade and key in.
The panelists in their discuss anchored by Bunmie Yekini affirmed that humans are endowed in thinking more than AI which can only react to prompt, while they also urged the reporters to be original in their report writing.
The workshop by the Pan-Atlantic Newsroom Artificial Intelligence Governance Network, for AI Governance Framework for Newsrooms in Nigeria organised for stakeholders is to establish a sector based governance framework drawn in tandem with the National AI Strategy.
While emphasising that Al offers new opportunities and uncertainties for editorial teams, it hinged that the stakeholders are part of the process of co-designing an Al Governance Framework tailored for Nigerian media, with ethical guidelines for responsible Al adoption and training of participants organisation media team on ethical Al tool usage.
The participants drawn from different media organisations and associations, got lectured on AI tools, such as DALL-E, Mid journey, Stable Diffusion, Canva, Data Wrapper, Flourish, Video generation documents, Spotify, workflow and Ethical AI and Editorial policy among others.