AI-FLUENT Podcast

You can investigate serious corruption cases, but it doesn't mean that the way you talk about it to your audience should be super serious and boring. What if you come up with an AI-powered avatar that uses facts checked by human journalists, yet speaks to the audience in a sarcastic voice as an assistant rather than a know-it-all expert?
Claudia Báez, a digital innovator and co-founder of the Colombian investigative website Cuestión Pública, thinks that investigative journalism should by no means be delivered in a way that is appealing only to men in suits over 40.
She created an AI-powered tool - Odín - to help her team of journalists stay relevant to the current news agenda, reach different audiences, and, of course, save time and money.
I talked to Claudia about this and much more, so maybe you, as a storyteller anywhere in the world, can be inspired and apply some of these insights in your everyday professional life.
Main topics we discussed in this episode:
Why Odín and how does this AI-powered tool help the team of Cuestión Pública stay relevant to audiences in Colombia?
What's the most important question regarding AI we should ask ourselves first?
What are the challenges investigative journalists face in Colombia, and how does technology help them solve some of those problems?
Investigative journalism doesn't have to be delivered in a serious and often boring way. Generative AI gives us many opportunities to experiment with formats aimed at different audiences.
On trust and transparency, and why journalists need to collaborate
Claudia’s favourite AI tools with examples from Spain, Argentina and Venezuela
On the future of journalism

In this episode, I am talking to Chris Roper, Deputy CEO of Code for Africa and Amanda  Strydom, Senior Programme Manager for CivicSignal, a programme within Code for Africa, which maps and offers insights into media ecosystems in Africa using research and machine learning tools. We talked about how the newsrooms they work with apply AI in their professional life. What are the AI-related issues that African newsrooms are truggling with and what kind  of solutions are they coming up with?
Code for Africa is also well-known for their work in tackling mis- and disinformation.  Chris and Amanda talk about different ways their organisation is helping African journalists to fight disinformation in a foundational way and what’s the role of AI in it.
Main topics we’ve discussed in this episode:
-The role of AI in helping journalists and citizens tackle mis/disinformation
-Generational differences in perceiving misinformation 
-Ethical policies of using AI in a newsroom: how to approach them
-Who owns your data which you share with AI tools
-The environmental effect of AI
-Life hacks from Chris and Amanda: how to use AI in a storytelling context 
-The future of AI and how it will shape the future of journalism 
-Does AI create more inequality in the Global South 
-What help journalists can get from Code for Africa and how they can collaborate with the organisation 
-AI-related regulations and laws: the ideal and real scenarios
-The importance of AI tools in investigative journalism 
-Exciting AI projects Chris and Amanda are working on  now 

AI-Fluent is my new podcast where I talk with storytellers from around the world about journalism and storytelling in all its shapes and forms, its marriage with AI and other technology, and innovative thinking.
Most of my guests are from the Global South, so it's a rare opportunity to listen to people with different perspectives, different challenges, and solutions they have to offer. New episode every Friday