Truth and Lies in the Age of AI: Experts Explain How Author Responsibility Will Shape the Future of Media
As part of the business program of the 2nd Global Digital Forum (GDF), a panel discussion titled “Humans Need Humans: Trust in Media in the Age of AI” was held on October 8. Experts discussed how audiences’ attitudes toward information are changing as neural networks and automated content creation advance rapidly.
The discussion was moderated by Anna Gorchakova, an expert in strategic communications, PR and government relations, and chair of the Council for the Creative Economy at the CIS Business Center. She proposed looking not only at what AI can do, but also at where its use in journalism and creative work should stop.
IT entrepreneur Mikhail Skobenko, a finalist of the National Award Rossiya – Strana Vozmozhnostey (Russia – Land of Opportunity) in the IT and AI category, said one of the defining features of the new media environment is the emergence of what he called cheap persuasion. Modern AI models can produce detailed reports, images and videos within minutes, and these can be difficult to distinguish from human-created content. At the same time, the volume of content is growing far faster than audiences’ ability to verify it.
The expert compared the situation with the use of AI in medicine: the technology can clearly speed up data processing, but if the underlying information is unreliable, the consequences of an error can be fatal. That is why a human must remain accountable for the outcome.
Media technologist and editor-in-chief of the Kulturnyy kod (Cultural Code) project Darya Yegorova highlighted another side of the problem: algorithm-driven content distribution. Once a journalist publishes a story on social media, its reach begins to be shaped by platform recommendations, user behavior and social connections. As a result, people receive information feeds shaped by more than their own choices.
Trust, therefore, is not just about how content is created, but also about how it reaches audiences and how they perceive it. Giri Maulana, founder of Ionz Creative Digital, emphasized a paradox of digital technology: the more tools become available for automated content creation, the greater the need for human expertise.
At the same time, the panelists said the answer is not to abandon AI. What matters more is deciding which tasks can be delegated to technology and which should remain with people. Blogger and artist Sofi Shine gave a practical example. She said that when working with AI, people can retain control over the idea and content while using technology for specific stages of production. “When creating the song ‘Yes or No,’ my sister and I came up with the idea and the lines based on our own lives, and then we entrusted the neural network with the melody and lyrics. A human handled the final arrangement and mixing. Only by combining human and artificial intelligence can you achieve the highest-quality result,” Sofi said.
The participants also discussed AI’s impact on human communication. Bangladeshi researcher and developer Saddam Hossain Roni noted that people are increasingly using neural networks as conversational partners and even turning to them for support in difficult emotional situations, much as they would a friend. In his view, this kind of digital communication can deepen isolation, because no algorithm can replace genuine relationships and empathy.
Srdjana Janosevic, an editor at the Seychelles News Agency, said human experience remains essential to journalism:
“Algorithms can help with translation, transcription and preparing materials, but investigative reporting, professional judgment and decision-making require experience, institutional memory and an understanding of context. One of the risks I would point to is users’ intellectual laziness, when people stop trying to understand a subject for themselves.”
Ikram Zaudi, an expert with the International Association for Fact-Checking, linked the issue of trust directly to the professional responsibility of news organizations. Journalists can use AI to create and edit content, he said, but they must correct factual inaccuracies themselves.
To conclude, the participants answered a question from the audience about how to protect children from the negative effects of the digital environment. The experts agreed that technical controls alone are not enough: critical thinking develops through education, personal example and real-life communication with children.
