BY PRINCE RONSON SABADO
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (AI) should not be feared as many things in life are already AI-powered, a journalism professor and online news editor said.
“News articles… in sports journalism, in business journalism, these stock market reports can be produced by AI,” UST journalism program coordinator Felipe Salvosa II said at a roundtable discussion organized by the Philippines Communication Society (PCS).
“I think we should not be scared of AI. Rather, let’s find out what we can do with AI’s help,” Salvosa added.
Salvosa, also the public affairs director of PCS, discussed how AI is slowly being integrated into people’s daily lives.
“If you just watch Netflix, if you can’t decide what you will watch, AI will already decide for you. In our appliances, the next appliance sets that you will buy will be partly AI-controlled,” he said.
The public, Salvosa said, should maximize the tools needed to make their lives easier now that AI is still in a developmental phase.
“[We can use AI] in our daily tasks or pain points like email writing and writing reports to speed up and make our lives more efficient,” he added.
Reminders and warnings
Havas Media Group chief digital officer Shayne Madamba said that originality remains an important point in the use of AI technology.
“All AI tools put together… will be sharing or will be giving us different types of outputs, but your originality put into those outputs will be key in any successful campaign that there will be,” she said.
Madamba, advertising specialist, said that while AI-driven technologies such as machine learning and generative art and text are being used in marketing campaigns, they should only be an inspiration and not a takeover of one’s original work. According to her, marketing and advertising work starts in the academe as it has the power to shape ethics and discipline among workers.
“The industry today has to be accountable enough [for] the outputs we actually bring forth to the market. We need to put justice in the work we give our customers,” she added.
IPG Mediabrands’ Matterkind country director Allan Lina warned that since AI is relatively new to public consciousness, its negative effects remain “improperly analyzed.” As a result, there are calls to halt or slow down its development.
IPG Mediabrands chief integration officer Raymond Dizon cited data privacy and security, lack of transparency, return of investment, and “human side” aspects such as bias and human touch as factors to look out for in the deployment of artificial intelligence.
“Until there are proper safeguards around transparency, accountability, and fairness, AI development will probably [face] a lot of opposition,” Lina said.
The forum titled “Unlocking the Potential of AI: Advertising & Marketing Strategies in the Digital Age” is the second installment of the four-part webinar series “AI, Naku! Understanding the Impact of Artificial Intelligence on Media and Communication Education” organized by the Philippines Communication Society, in partnership with the University of the Philippines and TVUP. The webinar aims to present the impact of AI on media and communication education. F
