Constructing the Agenda: Public Service AI in News and Media Production

AI and data-driven systems are changing the way news and media are produced and consumed with implications for the way citizens communicate and democratic societies function. Public service media (PSM) provide a fundamental information infrastructure but face challenges to innovating technologically in a responsible and value-aligned way while maintaining legitimacy and capacity to meet societal expectations. There is an urgent need to address practical and conceptual barriers to development and adoption in industry. We ask: what kinds of systems might be used and what is stopping AI being embedded in PSM? Application to date has been limited and there is some resistance - why? Is it cost, capacity, trust? Do core PSM values misalign to values that inform the development of AI systems? Responding to these challenges requires meaningful collaboration across disciplines, conceptual risk-taking, and internal/external partnership building.

We explored the implications of artificial intelligence (AI) for public service media (PSM), drawing out the big questions AI and data-intensive technologies raise alongside the practical and conceptual challenges they pose. We ran six workshops and constructed a cutting edge research agenda driven by state-of-the-art academic insights and real industry challenges.