Africa media practitioners, among them Botswana Press Agency (BOPA) employees on Tuesday attended a one-day online seminar on The Rise of AI and Its Impact on Journalism organized by Xinhua News Agency Africa Regional Bureau.
The seminar was aimed at creating an interactive platform to discuss the impact and effectiveness of Artificial Intelligence (AI) as a supporting and transformative tool in content production, information dissemination and general news services across the media agencies.
While she appreciated that the development of AI-generated content had made information generation and dissemination easier, Associate Professor for The School of Journalism and Communication at the Renmin University of China, Dr Yingying Chen noted that such developments also came with challenges to the media industry. She said the current media ecosystems posed challenges to journalistic credibility and public trust, owing to the urgency of misinformation in the AI era.
She said AI tools could be used to rapidly spread conspiracy theories through fake audios and videos as well as synthetic texts and articles. Subsequently, she underscored the need to use both pre-bunking and debunking in order to avoid misinformation disinformation.
Debunking only corrects information after it spreads, and such information would lad behind the falsehood already spread, while pre-bunking inoculates your audience before exposure. Therefore, the best strategy as a takeaway for journalists would be to use both to prepare audiences in advance and correct falsehoods, she explained.
Dr Chen further noted that even though the rapid development of AI tools enhanced effectiveness in the media space, there was still need for human verification of information. She implored journalists to uphold ethical standards and maintain credibility and trust through transparency and engagement with their audiences. Once trust is broken, facts alone cant repair it, she said.
Participants were also equipped with skills on how to verify AI information, detect fake audio- visuals as well as AI-modified pictures for accurate and credible news reporting. EMXinhua trains Africa journalists on AI usage

Africa media practitioners, among them Botswana Press Agency (BOPA) employees on Tuesday attended a one-day online seminar on The Rise of AI and Its Impact on Journalism organized by Xinhua News Agency Africa Regional Bureau.
The seminar was aimed at creating an interactive platform to discuss the impact and effectiveness of Artificial Intelligence (AI) as a supporting and transformative tool in content production, information dissemination and general news services across the media agencies.
While she appreciated that the development of AI-generated content had made information generation and dissemination easier, Associate Professor for The School of Journalism and Communication at the Renmin University of China, Dr Yingying Chen noted that such developments also came with challenges to the media industry. She said the current media ecosystems posed challenges to journalistic credibility and public trust, owing to the urgency of misinformation in the AI era.
She said AI tools could be used to rapidly spread conspiracy theories through fake audios and videos as well as synthetic texts and articles. Subsequently, she underscored the need to use both pre-bunking and debunking in order to avoid misinformation disinformation.
Debunking only corrects information after it spreads, and such information would lad behind the falsehood already spread, while pre-bunking inoculates your audience before exposure. Therefore, the best strategy as a takeaway for journalists would be to use both to prepare audiences in advance and correct falsehoods, she explained.
Dr Chen further noted that even though the rapid development of AI tools enhanced effectiveness in the media space, there was still need for human verification of information. She implored journalists to uphold ethical standards and maintain credibility and trust through transparency and engagement with their audiences. Once trust is broken, facts alone cant repair it, she said.
Participants were also equipped with skills on how to verify AI information, detect fake audio- visuals as well as AI-modified pictures for accurate and credible news reporting. ENDS