Dr Rahul Dass, Associate Professor, at the School of Media, conducted two technical training sessions on the role of Artificial Intelligence for Sri Lanka’s media professionals at Dr MCR HRD Institute of Telangana.

The back-to-back sessions were held on June 27 at the program sponsored by the Ministry of External Affairs. The program was held from June 24 to July 6.

The first session dealt with the growing role of AI in the media. Case studies were shared with the participants who were editors, veteran journalists, and top government officials, including Sugeeswara P Senadhira who is the Media Advisor to the Prime Minister of Sri Lanka.

Specific examples were discussed for news gathering, news production, countering bias, audience engagement and research as well as innovation.

In the second session, hands-on training for AI tools was imparted to the participants. They were encouraged to use the AI tools, and the output was then discussed during the session.

One set of participants used an AI tool to find out the background details of a photograph that had gone viral. The AI tool gave precision information, including pointing out that the original photograph dated back to the year 2013.