IPTC’s Managing Director Brendan Quinn spoke at the event Breaking the News? Global perspectives on the future of journalism in the age of AI in Berlin on Wednesday 28th January, an event organised by Deutsche Welle Akademie, an arm of IPTC member Deutsche Welle.

Barbara Massing, Director General, Deutsche Welle gave the opening presentation where she emphasised that all news organisations depended on earning, and keeping, the trust of their audience: “Trust is not a given. It must be earned. Every single day.”

Reem Alabali Radovan, Germany’s Federal Minister for Economic Cooperation and Development, gave her thoughts on the importance of media companies to global democracy.

Courtney Radsch of the the Open Markets Institute gave a keynote presentation where she encouraged media organisations to hold strong against the narrative pushed by AI vendors, asking them not to give in to the jargon of the industry. AI tools do not have “hallucinations”, they make “fabrications.”

IPTC’s Brendan Quinn spoke on a panel on the relationship between AI vendors and publishers, along with representatives from Open AI and Cloudflare (other AI companies were invited to attend but declined the invitation). Quinn spoke about the IPTC’s AI opt-out guidelines and discussed the complicated landscape and the lack of progress in the IETF AI Preferences Working Group, as documented in a recent Open Future Foundation paper.

A report from Deutsche Welle on the event summarised the following takeaways:

• Collaboration and solidarity: Media companies only have power together
• Tech companies need to be regulated – they won’t self-regulate
• Media need a clear understanding of tech business models
• Media can and should use public-interest AI tools
• We need a better dialogue with big tech – demonisation won’t help
• Journalism must be treated as critical infrastructure, not just an industry

Thanks to Deutsche Welle Akademie for hosting the event and inviting Brendan Quinn to speak.