AI AND DATA INITIATIVE
December 2019

In this edition, we:

• report on our 'AI in Production and Distribution' workshop (watch the videos)
• highlight useful upcoming events
• and share articles we’ve been reading, about medical ethics in AI, national AI strategies, beating deep fakes, and smart communities in Togo.

We also take a closer look at the long-standing relationship between AI and creative arts: from AI-focused art events to the use of AI in visual arts and music.

SPOTLIGHT

The AIDI workshop on AI in Production and Distribution took place on 27 - 28 Nov 2019, kindly hosted by the BBC at their MediaCity UK facilities in Salford/Manchester. The workshop gathered an interdisciplinary crowd of decision makers, technical experts and editorial users, and explored a variety of topics: from ethical frameworks and PSM values, to business metrics and KPIs for AI, and, of course, AI applications in the newsroom, media creation, distribution and consumption. Videos and PDFs of the presentations are accessible to EBU Members on the event's web page.

DID YOU KNOW?

AI and the creative arts have had a long and fruitful relationship – and the evolution in that field is having a bearing on media content and production. Two interesting examples from the field are visual artist Sougwen Chung, who draws with robots, and the AI-generated Beatles-inspired pop music created by researcher François Pachet. Find out more about the field of AI, music and the arts, and how it relates to the media industry: the history, artists, community, research, tech companies, current trends, and how this is pushing the creative envelope and changing media production.

LATEST NEWS

The European Commission is calling for tenders in relation to a planned International Alliance for a human-centric approach to Artificial Intelligence.

There were a number of events on AI in the arts and in music production this year, which have been bridging gaps between popular culture and AI and data technologies:

• The Work of Art in the Age of Artificial Intelligence workshop on AI as an artistic tool, concept and curational approach, at the CTM Festival for Adventurous Music & Art, hosted by Art Laboratory Berlin.
• GAMMA_LAB AI an archive-based music composition workshop at the Gamma music festival in Saint-Petersbourg.
• Art and Artificial Intelligence conference about the economic, cultural and political impacts of AI, at ZKM Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe in Karlsruhe.
• AI Traps: Automating Discrimination conference on “how AI & algorithms reinforce prejudices and biases of its human creators and societies, and how to fight discrimination”. Part of the Disruption Network Lab’s conference series in Berlin, on politics, technology and society.
• Trustworthy AI: Imagining Better Machine Decision Making exhibition, talks and participatory sessions at Arts & Culture Space, MozFest 2019, in London (view the catalogue).
• Symposium on Environmental Intelligence organised by the AI Culture Lab at Waag Society, Amsterdam.
• Finally, Prix Ars Electronica, the world’s most renowned media arts competition, has a new category called Artificial Intelligence and Life Art.

UPCOMING EVENTS

• EBU Production Technique Seminar (Geneva, 28-30 Jan)
• IEEE International Conference on Big Data and Smart Computing BigComp 2020, (Busan, 19-22 Feb)
• EBU Digital Media Days 2020 (Milan, 11-13 March)
• EBU BroadThinking 2020 (Geneva, 24-25 March)
• AI World Conference 2020 (London, 24-25 March)
• EBU Academy's Computer-Assisted Journalism Course (Cardiff, 11-15 May)

Visit ebu.ch to see all our upcoming events, plus presentations and videos from past events.

WHAT WE'RE READING

• ‘Where Should AI Ethics Come From? Not Medicine, New Study Says’ – Singularity Hub
• ‘An Overview of National AI Strategies’ – Medium
• ‘Deepfake Video: It takes AI to beat AI’ – Hewlett Packard Entreprise
• ‘On building African smart cities’ – Design Indaba