Theme: Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning for the media

The International Press Telecommunications Council (IPTC) is always looking for ways to stay at the forefront of new developments in the media industry, including the exciting field of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine learning.

Many IPTC members already using machine learning techniques for content classification and image recognition, but more media organisations are starting to explore the area more deeply, using AI to generate content, images and even story ideas.

IPTC’s AI Expert Group

To facilitate discussions and collaboration on these topics, we have set up an AI Expert Group where IPTC member organisations can come together to share their knowledge and insights on the implications of new technology in their field.

In recent years, we have been fortunate to have several prominent experts and startups in the AI field present to our member meetings and the IPTC Photo Metadata Conference. These presentations have provided valuable insights into the current state of the art in AI and machine learning, and have sparked interesting discussions on how these technologies could be used in the media industry.

Support for AI in IPTC Standards

We are also actively exploring how our standards can adapt to work with AI. For example, we have extended the “Digital Source Type” NewsCodes vocabulary to include different types of machine-generated content, and we are examining the IPTC Photo Metadata Standard to see how we can allow Generative AI information to be stored in image metadata.

At the IPTC, we are committed to staying on the cutting edge of new developments in the media industry, and we are excited to see how AI and machine learning will continue to evolve and impact our field. We look forward to working with our member organisations and other stakeholders to explore the full potential of these technologies.

(The above text was (mostly) generated by ChatGPT!)

Recent content on Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning for the media

• May 2023:
  • IPTC publishes guidance on using IPTC metadata to signal AI-generated content.
  • Use of IPTC metadata is picked up by Google Image search and by Google’s generative AI tools
  • Midjourney and Shutterstock also agree to add IPTC metadata to signal AI-generated content
• November 2022: Panel on Metadata for AI Images at the 2022 IPTC Photo Metadata Conference

• October 2022: Presentations at the IPTC Autumn Meeting 2022 on AI (Full video available to IPTC Members via the Members-Only page)
  • Deepfake detection using AI analysis of images from RealityDefender.ai 
• May 2022: Presentations on AI topics at the 2022 IPTC Spring Meeting (Full video available to IPTC Members via the Members-Only page):
  • Robot journalism with Henning Johannesson, Chief Product Officer, United Robots
  • Kairntech: content classification with AFP
  • NYT Papertrail: Transcribing Newspaper Archives with ML. A New York Times Labs project to use machine learning technology to parse photographs of pages in the newspaper archive, identify where stories lie across various types of page layout, and turn each story into human-readable text.
  • Bria: AI-generated image and video: A guest presentation from Bria, a promising startup creating machine-generated images and video.
  • Latest advances in Synthetic Media: Consultant and author Henrik de Gyor took us through the latest developments in the fast-changing world of synthetic media
• October 2021: Presentations on AI topics at the 2021 IPTC Autumn Meeting (Full video available to IPTC Members via the Members-Only page):
  • Videre AI – Next-generation video understanding for news content with Keesiu Wong, Design AI
  • Artificial Images and Video based on metadata with Mark Milstein, Microstocksolutions
  • AWS Comprehend and IPTC Media Topics with Robert Schmidt-Nia, DATAGROUP Consulting Services
  • AI in Photojournalism: Can it work? from Ilkka Järstä & Marina Ekroos, Frameright