This year’s Press Freedom Day was marked by statements from the UN and the Ethiopian Media Council (EMC) cautioning about the risks posed by the misuse of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in journalism.

The UN set ‘Reporting in the Brave New World: The Impact of Artificial Intelligence on Press Freedom and the Media’ as its theme to commemorate the day. A bulletin published on the UN website warned that AI presents a serious risk in a world already awash in misinformation, disinformation, and growing distrust of mainstream media and professional journalism.

“AI tools are being used maliciously to generate convincing but false content, including articles, images, audio clips, and deepfake videos. This makes it harder for the public to distinguish fact from fiction,” reads the bulletin.

Studies show that threats of exploitation and intellectual property rights breaches have already been realized, with reports of inaccurate data used to inform AI generated stories, false attributions to journalists, and creators discovering use of their likeness without their knowledge or consent.

In a statement it issued to mark Press Freedom Day, the EMC emphasized the need to raise public awareness about the pros and cons of AI in journalism. The Council highlighted the need to put guardrails in place to protect the public from AI-generated misinformation.

“At this point in time, AI has brought with it immense opportunities and many serious challenges to press freedom and media operations,” reads the EMC statement, “We need to ponder the ways of employing the advent of AI for good use while identifying the dangers posed to objective journalism and the accessibility of accurate information.”

It urged that discussions on the ways AI is shaping the media landscape need to take into consideration its capacity to generate false and fraudulent information, and emphasize the need to fight misinformation and safeguard the credibility of mainstream media.

Journalists, it said, need to acquire the skills and knowledge necessary to work in media environments driven by AI, while acknowledging the fact that and creating guardrails against ways in which AI may tamper with the regular journalistic practices, reducing journalistic employment opportunities.

Still, both the UN and the Council, which counts more than 100 media houses and associations among its members, recognizes the immense potential in employing AI in journalism.

“AI offers valuable tools for journalists. It can process vast volumes of data, from official documents and transcripts to videos and social media, far faster than traditional methods. Time-consuming tasks such as transcription, keyword searching, trend analysis, and even initial drafting can be streamlined. This frees up journalists to focus on in-depth investigation, fact-checking, and narrative storytelling, the core tenets of high-quality journalism,” reads the UN bulletin.