{"id":41408,"date":"2026-03-16T19:13:07","date_gmt":"2026-03-16T19:13:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/41408\/"},"modified":"2026-03-16T19:13:07","modified_gmt":"2026-03-16T19:13:07","slug":"panel-debates-if-ai-adoption-means-well-simply-end-up-talking-to-ourselves","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/41408\/","title":{"rendered":"Panel Debates If AI Adoption Means We’ll “Simply End up Talking to Ourselves”"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tPublic interest media is being marginalized, generative AI<\/a> is flooding the market with content, and communalities are evaporating. That was a scenario outlined by AI based on a prompt that was presented by Beadie Finzi, one of the co-directors of documentary non-profit Doc Society, on Monday as part the industry section of the\u00a023rd edition<\/a>\u00a0of the\u00a0Copenhagen International<\/a> Documentary Film Festival,\u00a0or\u00a0CPH:DOX<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tBruno Patino, head of ARTE France, which works on the European public service\u00a0channel ARTE with ARTE Deutschland, a subsidiary of German public TV networks\u00a0ARD\u00a0and\u00a0ZDF, addressed this scenario and outlined his vision for public media in Europe in a keynote address. \u201cThese are not predictions. This is already our present,\u201d he offered. And he outlined what he described as the key risks for a future, in which \u201cAI determines the citizens\u2019 place in society, deciding the information, the culture and entertainment they have access to.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tPatino noted how in the social media age, social networks are \u201cthe primary gateway to information,\u201d describing that as an algorithm-driven \u201cpush era.\u201d He concluded about media consumption behavior: \u201cPeople wait for content to reach them.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAt the same time, \u201cthe very notion of scale is changing,\u201d with global players looking for more weight and market power, such as in the Paramount Skydance deal for Warner Bros. Discovery, he said. Plus, the \u201cfunding ideas of our cultural model are under pressure.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAll in all, in the social media age, \u201cvirality became central,\u201d the executive concluded, leading to the \u201crise of the attention economy.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWith AI, though, content creation becomes easier than ever, but the diversity of voices may be going in the opposite direction. There is \u201cmore content than ever before, but diversity could be shrinking,\u201d Patino suggested.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn the AI age, \u201ceverything becomes blurred between human and machine, authentic and synthetic, reality and fiction,\u201d he argued, warning: \u201cMedia no longer speak directly to citizens. They speak to an agent that speaks to citizens.\u201d He described this new age as \u201cthe age of the relationship economy.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe AI-driven agents, though, deliver \u201cthe narrative of our own mirror rather than [of a] community,\u201d Patino cautioned, concluding: \u201cWe may simply end up talking to ourselves.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe ARTE France chief mentioned such European media industry challenges as discoverability, \u201cin an age when AI is controlled by U.S.-based giants,\u201d and the ability to create content, meaning \u201cEurope must rely on the power of coalitions\u201d and imagine Europe as a tree with a strong trunk of shared values and many branches of different languages and cultures. \u201cARTE is one of these tools. It was made for this,\u201d Patino offered, citing its mission to create common ground. \u201cARTE can become the European public square.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\tThe goal here is \u201cnot to create a European Netflix,\u201d but \u201ca complementary offer\u201d to national broadcasters in European countries, Patino said, addressing industry attendees: \u201cWe invite you to be part of an alliance to oppose the power of data with something essential \u2013 the power of imagination, of representation and of symbols that we share.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHe offered that vision as a way into an alternative future. \u201cWe can all avoid the dark scenario of AI that governs our lives and our relationships to the world,\u201d he concluded.<\/p>\n

\n\tTo much applause, Patino on Monday also highlighted that ARTE co-produced the best documentary Oscar winner Mr. Nobody Against Putin<\/a> and Arte France Cin\u00e9ma also backed\u00a0Joachim Trier\u2019s best international film Oscar winner Sentimental Value<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n\tBill Thompson, principal research engineer at BBC Research & Development, said during a panel discussion later in the day that traditional media have been part of the problem. \u201cOver the last 40 years, independent media in particular became complicit in the activities of organizations that actually do not have our interests at heart, and we\u2019ve allowed ourselves to be taken and absorbed and used in ways that create the crisis that we heard about earlier,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019re at the point where things are breaking because the media environment is so toxic. So our inheritance is ultimately that a large number of people, including me, fell for it many years ago.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThey cooperated with \u201cthe devil, and we were wrong, and the technologies that we thought could help us turned out to have been designed in ways that could never deliver what we wanted from them,\u201d he concluded before asking: \u201cAre we actually locked into systems which are now under the control of the people who can just take away our freedom when they need to, by killing accounts for independent media organizations on YouTube, by shifting their algorithms so as to privilege certain messages and not others?\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tComparing digital technology and its power players to toxic exes, Thompson said that tech giants now are \u201creplacing direct access to our material with AI-generated, they call them, summaries, \u2026 which create another layer between us and our audiences.\u201d His takeaway: \u201cWhat we\u2019ve inherited is a bit of a mess, and I hope that we can do something about it. And oddly enough, I am optimistic about being able to do something about it, because what technology is taking away, technology can [also] deliver.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tCreating communities where people can \u201cfeel the sense of belonging\u201d would be a key goal for the road ahead, Thompson said.<\/p>\n

\n\tEntrepreneur, coder and author Aya Jaff shared her experience working with Silicon Valley power brokers, saying when they talk about \u201cfreedom,\u201d they mean being \u201cfree of democratic control.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\tSince having turned her back on the tech giants and their financiers and become a vocal critic of what she dubbed, in a book title, the Broligarchie, she has noticed something interesting. \u201cFunnily enough, the more critical I become of this world, and the more critical I am of all of these tech platforms, I realized that I\u2019m also getting offers from them,\u201d Jaff said, sharing an anecdote. \u201cI didn\u2019t have to sign an NDA for this. What they\u2019re trying to do is really tasteless. Amazon reached out to me, and they were like, \u2018Oh, we can see you\u2019re gaining so much attention with your critical views, and we like your videos and your stance. How about you do a show with us talking about the perils of the gig workers, for Amazon itself, talking about the negative sides of all of that gig economy. And let\u2019s call the show Eat the Rich.\u201d <\/p>\n

Jaff\u2019s reaction: \u201cReally?! Amazon wants to call the show Eat the Rich? Now you want to also monetize the movement against you?! Of course, I said no, but I did want to share that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tLater in the summit day, investigative journalist Carole Cadwalladr warned: \u201cThere is less time than you think. \u2026 If we do not act now, we are not going to be in a position to tell some of these stories.\u201d She pointed to the \u201ctotal collapse\u201d of press freedom in the U.S. as a sign of the velocity of change. \u201cWe have seen the speed at which U.S. press freedom has collapsed, all forms of democratic accountability, within one year,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n

\n\tCadwalladr also warned that we \u201cstill live in this sort of fantasy land that the billionaires are going to come and save us in some respect, that there\u2019s going to be some magic pot of funding that\u2019s going to appear and is going to actually solve a lot of these problems.\u201d She concluded: \u201cThe general public is quite far behind in understanding the urgency and the gravity of everything you\u2019re talking about in this room. So I would say, those of you who are commissioners, please, really get out there and start telling your audience. Find those stories which communicate that.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Public interest media is being marginalized, generative AI is flooding the market with content, and communalities are evaporating.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":41409,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[6],"tags":[248,108,8200,762],"class_list":["post-41408","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-copenhagen","tag-ai","tag-copenhagen","tag-cphdox","tag-international"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@dk\/116240449892851875","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41408","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41408"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41408\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/41409"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41408"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41408"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41408"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}