Around the world, media and civil society are actively exploring AI products and services, and this use is expanding at a rate that is difficult to keep pace with. While AI offers an exciting range of utilities and efficiencies, proliferation of the technology also presents challenges and harms, many of them complex and potentially severe. For better or worse, AI is already having profound impacts on global information ecosystems.

Within this context, Internews has a significant role to play. With our global reach and towards our mission impact, we are well situated to provide expertise and guidance to our global partners, helping them ensure AI is deployed safely, equitably, to the best effect, and only when fit for purpose. Internews also has a role within the wider information ecosystem, supporting efforts to educate the public about AI, as well as working with partners to document harms impacting diverse communities, and to develop both policy and technical protections.

We can divide Internews’ AI related programming into work that supports the informed and responsible use of AI, and work that supports the wider mitigation of potential AI harms. The first set of interventions primarily targets information providers and media practitioners who are using AI, providing them with direct support to identify appropriate use cases for AI, ensure information quality, and develop the skills and capacity required to operate safely and effectively.

The second set of interventions seeks to mitigate potential harms related to AI at an information ecosystemic level, promoting AI literacy, supporting AI accountability, and ensuring a range of global voices have input into AI policy and governance.

While work relating directly to the use of AI is likely to draw most of the focus, in practice all work that Internews engages in related to AI has elements of safety and harm mitigation. For this reason we can consider all programming that utilizes AI products and services to be a subset of programming that is designed to mitigate the potential harms of AI.

Internews’ global partners and their networks are actively using AI for a wide range of purposes. Our interventions in this area support those who are already using AI and those who have an interest in doing so.