The debate in the ANJ advocates immediate regulation of the use of journalistic content by AI tools

The discussion concluded the event held by ANJ, where the Palavra Aberta Institute awarded the Instituto of the Year for its defense of press freedom and honored newspapers dating back 13 centuries, including O GLOBO, for their work and contributions to the consolidation of Brazilian democracy.

In defense of freedom of the press – ANJ awards the Palavra Aberta Institute and honors O GLOBO and other centenary newspapers

Alan Greb, managing editor at Globo, defended the urgent need for a regulatory model that takes into account the wages and work of those who actually produce the content that is now published for free by AI tools.

– It is inevitable that we deal with regulation. We need to define responsibilities and penalties and determine how far the use goes and how this should be reported. But we don’t discuss that. This discussion has stalled in Brazil. This is not what happens in other countries. Europe is much more advanced and has a very interesting model on this issue, but here we are immersed in this institutional confusion that has no end, and unfortunately this has not progressed. The way forward is regulation, Greib said.

Sergio Davila, editorial director at Folha, emphasized that the absence of these rules encourages piracy, as happened in the past.

Every time an AI-sized technological disruption emerges, the next step is for disruptors to practice hacking. This happened with the spread of the Internet in the 1990s, with the spread of social networks in the 2000s, and is happening now with artificial intelligence. Piracy, in our case, is the use of our content in all business models that assume monetization of your content. And use this content without paying,” Davila said.

In her participation, Patricia Branco, President of the Palavra Aperta Institute, defended the construction of policies aimed at strengthening journalism in times of deployment of artificial intelligence tools.

– I think that journalism runs the risk of pasteurization, of falling into the trap of the result offered by the AI ​​tool so that it stops being creative, stops looking at the other side, analyzing the context and many other issues that only the journalistic view, the human view, will be able to bring news – Patricia highlighted.

At another point in the discussion, Estadão’s managing editor, Euripides Alcantara, explained how the newspaper was using artificial intelligence on a daily basis. According to him, even if he uses the tool to investigate a report, the journalist is, ultimately, the true author of what is written.

– Estadão has developed the following strategy: Free force in the use of artificial intelligence and technologies in the phase before the content is delivered to the public, and between production and delivery, internal laws, very strict and easy-to-interpret rules. In the text, you will be the author of any article you place on any Estadão channel. The journalist is responsible, he represents the newspaper. This is one person talking to another person. It does not matter how much you use new technologies – Euripides explained.

The moderator of the discussion, Marta Gleich, supported Estadão Director’s remarks about the need for human supervision in the production of journalistic texts generated using artificial intelligence mechanisms, and recalled two basic premises.

The first is always human supervision, there must always be human supervision. The second is not to deceive the public, which is actually part of our values, our journalistic principles from the beginning, for all reliable media.

For GLOBO’s Alan Greb, the potential of AI in the newsroom is impossible to ignore. He agrees that having clear rules within a newspaper is absolutely essential.