BEIJING, November 7. /TASS/. Artificial intelligence opens up major opportunities for journalism but also creates new risks, TASS Director General Andrey Kondrashov said at the opening ceremony of the 7th World Media Summit at the Great Hall of the People in the Chinese capital.

"AI opens up tremendous opportunities for journalism, but at the same time creates new risks. Not only the future of individual newsrooms but also the level of public trust in the media as a whole will depend on how responsibly we manage to use these opportunities," he said, noting that TASS is closely monitoring the development of such technologies and incorporating them into its workflows. At the same time, the agency’s CEO stressed that the use of artificial intelligence in the newsroom must above all be "responsible and ethical," and that the final word "must always remain with a human being."

As Kondrashov pointed out, "it is a human being who decides whether information is trustworthy, how socially significant it is, what context needs to be taken into account and how to present a complex event to the audience accurately." The TASS CEO noted that as AI is increasingly used to produce fake information, the more sophisticated the technology becomes, the greater human responsibility must be: "the easier it becomes to create and disseminate any information, the more valuable reliable information becomes."

About the media summit

The 7th World Media Summit, dedicated to cooperation among media outlets in the era of artificial intelligence, is taking place in Beijing from November 5 to 9. It is organized by the Xinhua News Agency and the Beijing government. The summit brings together about 500 representatives from nearly 330 leading media outlets, think tanks, government agencies, the UN, and other international organizations from 112 countries and regions. The program includes an opening ceremony, a high·level dialogue, a plenary session, thematic forums, a science and technology exhibition, a photo exhibition, and cultural events.

The TASS delegation, headed by Kondrashov, is participating in the summit. The agency is part of the presidium of the media summit, which has been held since 2009, and was also among the nine media organizations that initiated its creation.