2022 Fellowship

Parrot is a tool and methodology to help journalists identify and measure the spread of manipulated narratives from state-controlled media. Using AI we will develop an early warning system that clusters and classifies state media-generated text and then detects coordinated efforts at its dissemination.

Explore Parrot

Watch the team's presentation at the 2022 JournalismAI Festival

Fellows:

• The Times & Sunday Times (UK): Venetia Menzies (Data and Digital Journalist) & Ademola Bello (Data Journalist, now with The New York Times)
• Ippen Media (Germany): Alessandro Alviani (Product Owner) & Simone Di Stefano (Data Engineer)

Image2Text identifies, classifies and labels video and images for newsrooms. Powered by computer vision models, it recognises objects and people in video, images and infographics, and labels specific contexts in Spanish and English through natural language. The tool seeks to promote better data governance by including perspectives from the Global South.

Explore Image2Text

Watch the team's presentation at the 2022 JournalismAI Festival

Fellows:

• Grupo Octubre (Argentina): Lucila Pinto (Product Manager) &   Nicolas Russo (Product Manager)
• GMA News Online (Philippines): Jaemark Tordecilla (Editor-in-Chief and Head of Digital Media) & Raymund Sarmiento (Chief Technology Officer)
• El Surti (Paraguay): Sara Campos (Product Editor) & Eduardo Ayala (Senior Full-Stack Developer)

Searching and comparing massive datasets for evidence of graft has become a big part of many investigative journalists’ jobs. Our project will use AI to extract NLP entities based on enriched context from long-form text, to do cross-referencing with pre-existing knowledge bases/graph models. In doing so, we hope to cut down the time needed in manual curation and generate story leads.

Explore Bad Will Hunting

Watch the team's presentation at the 2022 JournalismAI Festival

Fellows:

• Daily Maverick (South Africa): Alet Law (Audience Development Manager) & Tinashe Munyuki (Retention Manager)
• The Guardian (UK): Luis Flores (Data Scientist) & Chris Moran (Head of Editorial Innovation)
• Follow The Money (Netherlands): Dimitri Tokmetzis (Senior Investigative Journalist and Data Team Lead) & Heleen Emanuel (Data Journalist and Creative Developer)

One of the biggest challenges with AI-made coverage is the ability to generate images that enrich and compliment stories. Images are also key to successful distribution and reaching new audiences. Our project will explore a solution for automatically creating relevant imagery for content made with natural language generation.

Explore Automating Visuals

Watch the team's presentation at the 2022 JournalismAI Festival

Fellows: 

• McClatchy (US): Theresa Poulson (Senior Product Manager) &  Tyler Dukes (Investigative Reporter)
• Gannett / USA TODAY Network: Sean Smith (Product Manager) & Mike Stucka (Former National Data Solutions Editor)

Context Cards is a machine learning model that creates and suggests context — data, bio, summary, location, timeline — to audiences and journalists, alongside an article. It trains on newsroom archives and learns from editors’ feedback. We are building on prior work, including modularjournalism.com, Newscards, and Structured Stories.

Explore Context Cards

Watch the team's presentation at the 2022 JournalismAI Festival

• Times of India: Ritvvij Parrikh (Director of News Products) & Karn Bhushan (Lead Data Analyst)
• Code for Africa: Amanda Strydom (Senior Programme Manager)

Claim Check aims to create a multilingual tool for journalists that uses AI to quickly detect false claims by setting up an alert system through an interface in Teams or Slack. This system will become a central hub for newsrooms to quickly check specific claims, thereby improving accuracy and enhancing the reporting capabilities of newsrooms.

Explore Claim Check

Watch the team's presentation at the 2022 JournalismAI Festival

Fellows:

• Australian Broadcasting Corporation: Gina McKeon (Innovation Editor) & Gareth Seneque (Technical Lead – AI/ML)
• Newtral (Spain): Irene Larraz (Fact-Checking and Data Coordinator) & Rubén Miguez (Chief Technology Officer)

Tracking influencers aims to help journalists to investigate influencers on a greater scale using AI techniques and developing a replicable methodology. This project focuses initially on creating a system to flag Instagram users who are promoting brands or services without complying with the rules of disclosing that they potentially have a commercial relationship. But this work is also meant to be the first step and the research phase of a broader system, which will highlight potential harmful or misleading content shared on Instagram and which a journalist could investigate further.

Explore Tracking Influencers

Watch the team's presentation at the 2022 JournalismAI Festival

• Sky News (UK): Przemyslaw Pluta (Head of Platform Solutions) & Carmen Aguílar Garcia (Senior Data Journalist, now with The Guardian)
• Infobae (Argentina): Juliana Fregoso (Project Manager for AI and Special Projects Newsroom) &  Matias Contreras (Chief Technology Officer)
• Il Sole 24 Ore (Italy): Marina Caporlingua (Software Engineer) & Pier Paolo Bozzano (Head of Content Innovation Lab, now with The Trust Project)

BR and MDR are both German public broadcasters with the mandate to provide multifaceted information to different kinds of audiences. They are using NLP to build a tool that analyses published content, as well as the comments of audiences, to find underreported topics in publications.

Explore the project

Watch the team's presentation at the 2022 JournalismAI Festival

Fellows:

• Bayerischer Rundfunk (Germany): Jörg Pfeiffer (Product Manager) & Philipp Gawlik (Language Engineer and Computational Linguist)
• MDR / ida (Germany): Martin Paul (Journalist & Chief of Service) & Jaime Avalos Mongil (Data Scientist)

Attack Detector aims to train a language model to detect hate speech – in Spanish and Portuguese – directed primarily at journalists and environmental activists. The model will classify the instances of hate speech among their diverse intersections so we can have an approach to understanding why and how they are happening.

Explore Attack Detector

Watch the team's presentation at the 2022 JournalismAI Festival

Fellows:

• Abraji (Brazil): Reinaldo Chaves (Project Coordinator) & Schirlei Alves (Data Journalist)
• Data Crítica (Mexico): Fernanda Aguirre Ruiz (Data Analyst and Researcher) & Gibrán Mena (Research and Direction)

Nubia is an AI-powered reporter that auto-creates development reports and data insights by transforming real-time data from satellite/web camera imagery, weather and socioeconomic data into news reports, data insights and advisory that can be distributed directly to the newsroom and general audience.

Explore Nubia

Watch the team's presentation at the 2022 JournalismAI Festival

Fellows:

• Dataphyte (Nigeria): Joshua Olufemi (Founder and Managing Director) & Emmanuel Alawode (Full-Stack Developer)
• Fædrelandsvennen (Norway): Mads Ommundsen (Journalist and Product Owner) & Frode Norbø (Developer and Designer)