Artificial intelligence in media – What the machine does, and what the journalist

Serbia is among the top three countries when it comes to the growth of online advertising, but also among the bottom ones when it comes to the volume of investments in that field. The digital advertising market in Europe has reached an all-time record, nearly EUR 119 billion, and makes for more than 67% of the total advertising costs. The application of artificial intelligence, which is increasingly used in journalism as well, is also influencing that growth, it was said at the conference at the Belgrade Youth Center.

The tools for the use of artificial intelligence are not fully adapted to the Serbian language and, until recently, we were almost unable to use them.

Pavle Zlatic, the digital operations director of the Velike price weekly, says that the transcription, audio and video content, spellchecking, translations - are already at a satisfactory level in 90 percent of the cases, whereas, in 10 percent of them, a human has to do the job.

– What might be important to say here is that it’s not a matter of how much a human has to do, but that it is still up to the human to do a full check of that kind of content – adds Zlatic.

Jobs outsourced to artificial intelligence

In Europe, 40 to 50 percent of the media use some of the AI tools, with a mandatory check of the credibility of the data, and in Serbia, the use of chatbots and various text and image processing programs is only just beginning. All media houses in Serbia are seriously thinking how to implement AI.

Zoran Stanojevic, the editor of the RTS Internet Portal, points out that there are already certain jobs, such as transcribing a conversation, which are largely outsourced to AI.

– It is noticeable that some articles were written by artificial intelligence and the illustrations keep repeating more and more, so it’s emerging in journalism, but it needs to be normed as soon as possible, so as to know where and how it can be used – adds Stanojevic.

What kinds of strategies are made in Great Britain

In Great Britain, the media make their own strategies for using AI. That doesn’t necessary mean reducing the number of employees, but the possibility of having them dedicated more to creative work, they say at the Financial Times.

– I tend to use an analogy from tourism, where I used to work once. When Booking arrived, hotels didn’t close because of it. Instead, it resulted in their not needing their own website or a big marketing team. We could say something to that effect – says Liz Lohn of the Financial Times.

The two-day conference “Digital Days” gathered around 600 experts from the country and abroad, which presented the latest data about the implementation of AI in the digital market through lectures and thematic panels.

Pavle Zlatić

Zoran Stanojević

Liz Lohn

artificial intelligence