When we created JournalismAI, we looked around for similar initiatives around the world. However, there were only a few individuals and organisations working in this space, such as the Quartz AI Studio, which helped journalists use machine learning. JournalismAI was the only initiative with the stated mission of helping journalists and news organisations understand and navigate the intersection of journalism and artificial intelligence. Over the years new programmes emerged.
In this article, we list existing networks and initiatives that are focused on supporting and empowering journalists, and/or newsrooms, to harness the power of artificial intelligence in journalism.
This is not an exhaustive list, and so if you know of any other similar initiatives that we have not listed here, please let us know by writing to us at hello@journalismai.info and we will update this article.
The first four projects are part of the Knight Foundation’s initiative to help address the critical knowledge and skills gap in the industry and are geared towards newsrooms in the US.
AP Local News AI
Description: The Associated Press has been at the forefront of AI in journalism since 2014, when it began automating parts of its news output. The Local News AI initiative, which began in 2021, is helping small newsrooms across the United States find AI-based solutions to tedious tasks, freeing up journalists to focus on quality reporting. The two-year initiative published a survey assessing AI-readiness in almost 200 newsrooms last year. Building on these findings, the AP is now working with five local outlets on projects ranging from the automation of news tips to AI-powered video transcripts. Ultimately, the AP aims to make the code for these projects publicly accessible, so that other newsrooms can leverage the tools developed.
Focus areas: Local newsrooms, scalable AI-powered tools
Location: United States
Local News Lab at Brown Institute
Description: The Local News Lab at the Brown Institute for Media Innovation was awarded a two-year grant to support applications of artificial intelligence and the sustainability of local news organisations. The Lab is a team of engineers, designers, and data scientists working to build machine learning powered, open-source, products to help support local newsrooms and their businesses. The team’s work is collaborative, partnering with small- to medium-sized publishers across the United States.
Focus areas: local newsrooms; experimentation; sustainability; research
Location: United States
Partnerships on AI – AI & Media Integrity
Description: A non-profit coalition founded by tech companies including Meta, Google, and Microsoft, working to ensure the responsible use of artificial intelligence. PAI’s AI and Media Integrity Program, the media wing of the broader organisation, looks into the impact of AI on digital information, and develops best practices. The coalition’s work in this space is divided into four streams: combatting manipulated content, promoting credible information, flagging misinformation, and empowering local newsrooms. Regarding the latter: PAI has recently released its AI Tools for Local Newsrooms Database, a useful resource for journalists navigating the changing media landscape. Most recently PAI also released the Responsible Practices for Synthetic Media framework on how to responsibly develop, create, and share synthetic media (i.e. audiovisual content often generated or modified by AI).
Focus: AI in digital media, combating misinformation, empowering local newsrooms
Location; United States
AI & Local News at NYC Media Lab
Description: A cross-organisational collaboration within the global hub that is New York City, the NYC Media Lab brings an array of supportive projects to local news organisations in the effort to mobilise their use of AI. Their core operations are centred upon interdisciplinary collaborations and knowledge sharing that ultimately helps their goal for local news to leverage AI in newsrooms, and set the foundation for sustainable journalism. The AI & Local News Challenge is another service by NYC Media Lab that opens an opportunity for university students and startups to develop projects that utilise AI to address problems in local newsrooms.
Focus areas: AI in local newsrooms, empowering newsrooms, AI insights
Location: United States
Nordic AI Journalism
Description: The Nordic AI collective seeks to actively engage with the evolution and development of AI in journalism, through ethical and responsible peer-led learning. The regional network consists of over 30 media companies across the Nordic that includes editorial, technical and strategic roles. Notable examples of interactive sessions are an explorative NLG project by Schibsted that highlights how AI can bring new dilemmas in terms of editorial values; which was further shared by BBC News Lab on their own personalised news experiences. Nordic AI coordinates their annual ‘Nordic AI in Media Summit’ (NAMS) whereby industry practitioners are invited to learn from leading media companies at the forefront of AI developments and showcase applied examples of AI creating value. The JournalismAI team have also met Nordic AI’s founders, Agnes Stenbom and Olle Zachrison, via our Collab in 2020, prior to them establishing this initiative.
Focus areas: industry collaboration, empirical research, empowering media companies with AI information
Location: Nordic countries/Scandinavia
Data-driven reporting project at Knight Lab
Description: A collaborative effort by both professors and students, Northwestern University Knight Labs strives to develop projects and services to promote quality journalism, storytelling and content on the internet. The team provides a collection of open-source tools developed for media makers that bring together the benefits of AI and tech-aided solutions for various journalistic projects, majorly their Data-Driven Reporting Project, which is in partnership with the Google News Initiative. The initiative seeks to resolve the profound resource disparities of local news organisations, and provides specialist training and support to both freelancers and organisations that work on document-based investigative journalism in underrepresented communities across the US and Canada. The work can be in any storytelling medium, and is moulded into a case study example for the wider journalism community to benefit from.
Focus areas: AI-powered tools, research innovation for media makers
Location: United States, Canada
Platform Intelligence in News Project (PIN)
Description: Spearheaded by the Copenhagen Business School, PIN is a public initiative that aims to support responsible platform intelligence within digital news publications. The project implements this with collaboration from Danish media company, JP/Politikens Hus, in order to combine university-led industrial research with experimental media research. The collaboration of insights allows PIN to develop and live test ‘novel recommender systems and natural language processing models’ designed for news publishing. The research outputs of this project will allow JP/Politikens Hus to publicly publish various applications such as personalised user experience and news flow, topic extraction, cross news article summarization and conversational journalism. Within the broader context, PIN seeks to fulfil the unaddressed needs for strategic economic growth in the Danish digital news publishing industry.
Focus areas: AI in digital news, AI-powered research and tools, empirical AI research
Location: Denmark
AI, Media and Democracy Lab
Description: An Ethical Legal Societal laboratory at the University of Amsterdam that focuses on the implications of AI for ‘media and democracy”. Their strong personal ethos of being an ‘Ethical Legal Society laboratory’ is coherently integrated in their various project categories of: media innovation, responsible artificial intelligence, imaginative intelligence and interdisciplinary research. This initiative directs their focus towards local Dutch media businesses developing innovative yet responsible AI-aided solutions for their customer experiences. The AI, Media and Democracy Lab is a cross-organisation collaboration of various interdisciplinary groups that strive for cutting-edge research and innovations to help find innovative AI solutions within the media space and beyond. In addition, their website includes a curated blog that discusses AI-related debates such as Chat GPT-4, Generative AI in Media, and the use of artificial intelligence in newsrooms.
Focus areas: interdisciplinary research, research collaborations, AI-backed innovations
Location: The Netherlands
Additional reporting by Jack Beeching and Ziyad Ejbaei.
Featured Image: Rahul Pandit/Pexels
JournalismAI is a global initiative of Polis and it’s supported by the Google News Initiative. Our mission is to empower news organisations to use artificial intelligence responsibly.
