For over a decade, the newsrooms are facing a daunting challenge to reduce costs to survive in a highly competitive global environment. From smartphone journalism to data journalism to reporting the news on Twitter and TikTok, news outlets without using new technology is unimaginable. With artificial intelligence (AI) entering every avenue of life, both smaller and big newsrooms are vying to employ the new tool and some predictions say by 2025, nearly 90% of news will be written by AI. In content writing, AI is already employed in transcription software, involving recognition and generation of words from an audio file. Currently, several data-based stories are making use of AI, though employing human supervision at the final stage.

Jack Clark, co-chair of the 2022 AI Index Report published by the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI), has declared that "2021 was the year that AI went from an emerging technology to a mature technology--we're no longer dealing with a speculative part of scientific research, but instead something that has real-world impact, both positive and negative". The report highlights that private sector investment in AI doubled in that year. Is it adopting AI at a similar pace? And what impact is AI having? JournalismAI gathered a group of news media executives from around the world in a private seminar at the International Journalism Festival to discuss their AI hopes and fears and strategies.

JournalismAI is a global initiative that aims to create opportunities for journalists and media organisations to come together and explore solutions to improve the future of journalism with AI. We are on a mission to inform media organisations about the potential offered by AI-powered technologies and to foster debate about the ethical, editorial, and social impact on AI for journalism. The work of JournalismAI is informed by the global survey that led to the publication of our report in November 2019: New powers, new responsibilities. The report suggests that AI is giving journalists significant new powers, but with those come editorial and ethical responsibilities. We see JournalismAI as a service to the news industry and everyone who's working in and around it.

This FREE online programme offers a deep-dive into the potential of artificial intelligence to journalists and media professionals from small newsrooms. It is designed by the JournalismAI team at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) and powered by the Google News Initiative. The Academy is a 6-week online programme that starts in September 2021 and, in its first pilot edition, it is designed for 20 participants from small news organisations (fewer than 50 employees) in the EMEA region (Europe, Middle East and Africa). In line with JournalismAI's mission to inform media organisations about the potential offered by AI-powered technologies and to foster debate about the ethical, editorial, and social impact of AI on journalism, the Academy aims to support small newsrooms that want to learn how AI can be used to support their journalism. The programme combines a series of masterclasses given by experts working at the intersection of journalism and artificial intelligence with opportunities for discussion among participants.