13 Webinars this week about AI, Journalism & Media

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Mon, July 21 - Introduction to Reporting on AI

What: Designed for reporters interested in getting started on reporting on artificial intelligence, even with minimal or no knowledge of AI. We will dissect what makes a good AI accountability story, from quick turnaround stories to more ambitious investigations.

Who: Davey Alba, a New York-based technology reporter for Bloomberg News.

When: 9 am, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: Project Multatuli and the Alliance of Independent Journalists Indonesia

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Tue, July 22 – What Journalists Want in 2025

What: Whether you're refining your pitch strategy, planning your next campaign, or simply trying to land better coverage, this session will help you align with what journalists are really looking for in 2025.

Who: Mosheh Oinounou Founder & Editor in Chief, Mo News; Allison Carter Editor-in-Chief, PR Daily & Ragan Communications; Joss Evans Social Team Lead, ITV News.

When: 11 am, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: Cision

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Tue, July 22 - How to Use Signal to Protect Documents and Sources

What: With the need for privacy and secure communications increasing, more journalists are turning to the Signal app while newsgathering. The app uses end-to-end encryption for its services that prevents third-parties from viewing the content shared. Join us for an introductory lesson on how to use the app to protect sources, documents and other materials.

Who: Davis Erin Anderson is a senior digital security trainer at Freedom of the Press Foundation; Abigail Lis-Perlis is the Program Manager for the digital security training team at Freedom of the Press Foundation.

When: 12 pm, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: New England First Amendment Coalition.

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Tue, July 22 - Images with ChatGPT

What: In this workshop, you’ll learn how to: Write prompts for ChatGPT + image models (like DALL·E) that yield professional-grade visuals. Learn prompt “styles” tailored to sermon slides, event flyers, social media graphics, and more. Optimize descriptions (e.g., color, mood, composition) for consistent branding. Export, refine, and repurpose images across platforms.

Who: Kenny Jahng, the Editor-in-Chief of ChurchTechToday.com and the Founder of AIforChurchLeaders.com.

When: 1 pm, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: $19

Sponsor: AI for Church Leaders

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Tue, July 22 - Tactics to Turn Newsletter Readers Into Paying Supporters

What: Practical, actionable tactics to help you:  Convert — Discover smart strategies that motivate your readers to become paying supporters. Retain — Learn how to keep those supporters engaged. Prevent churn — Recognize early signs when supporters start to drift away and how to bring them back before you lose them.

Who: Dan Oshinsky, the former Director of Newsletters at BuzzFeed and The New Yorker, and now the founder of Inbox Collective, a consultancy that helps publishers grow their audiences and revenue through email.

When: 2 pm, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: Indiegraf

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Wed, July 23 - Strengthening Latino Representation in Newsrooms

What: A solutions-driven conversation rooted in the findings of the issue brief, “Beyond the Byline: The Impact of Latino Journalists on Local Newspaper Coverage During the COVID-19 Pandemic." This new research brief analyzes more than 13 million local news articles to understand how the news media portrays Latino communities—and what happens when Latino journalists are behind the byline.

Who: Francisco I. Pedraza, Director, ASU CLAPR; Julio Ricardo Varela, editor, The Latino Newsletter; Katya Mendoza, reporter, AZ Public Media; Astrid Galván, editor, Axios Texas; Misael Galdámez, senior policy analyst, UCLA LPPI.

When: 1 pm, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: UCLA Latino Policy and Politics Institute and Arizona State University Center for Latina/os and American Politics Research

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Wed, July 23 - The IP List Info Session

What: How to get your stories into consideration for film and TV.

Who: Christine MacLaren, who runs IP List.

When: 2 pm, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: Solutions Journalism Network

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Thu, July 24 - Maximize Holiday Campaign Results with CTV And AI

What: A break down what’s behind the shift from social media to CTV (Connected TV), how leading marketers are staying agile, and how AI is powering smarter, outcome-focused campaigns. Whether you’re finalizing your holiday plans or looking to boost performance, this session will help you rethink your strategy and get more from your budget.  

Who: Rebecca Miller, Director of Corporate Marketing, tvScientific; Tim Sheets, VP of Advertiser Performance, tvScientific; Matt Janusz, VP of revenue, tvScientific.

When: 1 pm, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: tvScientific  

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Thu, July 24 - AI-Enhanced Storytelling & Content Creation

What: Discover how to amplify your nonprofit’s message with storytelling strategies and AI tools. This session equips you with actionable tools to fuel your mission’s success. 

Who: Hailey P Evans, author of EPIC Impact: The Proven Framework to Captivate Supporters in 7 Seconds; Dani Cluff is the Channel Marketing Coordinator at Bloomerang.

When: 2 pm, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: Bloomerang

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Thu, July 24 - From Chatbots to AI Agents in College Admissions

What: Discuss the potential of AI agents, how they can benefit admissions, and how they can be properly used to improve the student experience throughout higher ed.

Who: Ian Wilhelm Deputy Managing Editor, The Chronicle of Higher Education.

When: 2 pm, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: The Chronicle of Higher Education

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Thu, July 24 - AI Agents for Summarizing Public Meetings

What: Our Hometown will demo the latest updates to their AI Summarizer for Public Meetings.

Who: Matt Larson is the president & CEO of Our-Hometown.com.

When: 2 pm, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: $35

Sponsor: Online Media Campus

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Fri, July 25 - Public Health Journalism: Lessons from our inaugural journalism fellowship cohort

What: Details from ambitious health reporting projects, including lessons learned, key findings, and tips for practicing this type of journalism.   

Who: Journalists in the cohort of The National Press Club Journalism Institute’s Public Health Reporting Fellowship.

When: 12 pm, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: The National Press Club Journalism Institute

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Fri, July 25 - Prompting with Purpose: Best‑Practice Techniques for Harnessing ChatGPT

What: We will move beyond “trial‑and‑error” prompting and lay out a practical, research‑backed framework you can use immediately in your work, studies, creative projects, or everyday problem-solving.  We will cover the anatomy of an effective prompt, iterative refinement loops, and advanced techniques. Whether you’re exploring ChatGPT for professional, academic, or personal use, you’ll leave with practical tools and repeatable strategies to make ChatGPT more predictable, controllable, and valuable in real-world scenarios.  This session is best suited for a beginner-intermediate audience.

Who: Lauren Oliphant Solutions Engineer at OpenAI.

When: 1 pm, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: OpenAI Academy

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Education needs to adapt to AI

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Education needs to adapt to AI. This means replacing classroom policies that prohibit the use of AI in writing assignments with policies promoting its responsible use. It also means teaching students that AI-generated plagiarism is still plagiarism, and that AI sometimes produces hallucinations. For current college and high school students, the capabilities of AI are no more surprising than internet access was to the people who were young two decades ago. Instructing them not to use AI to help them write makes as little sense as telling students in 2005 not to use the internet for research. -John Villasenor writing for Brookings

18 Articles about AI & Politics

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It aspires to become a god rather than a servant

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If you want to know if there exists a lens with specific properties compatible with a particular model of camera, or seek advice on how to carry out a plumbing repair, ChatGPT can probably be of use. But ChatGPT is much less likely to help you make sense of your inbox or your files, partly because it hasn’t been trained on them—and partly because it aspires to become a god rather than a servant. - Ian Bogost writing in The Atlantic

Inside ‘AI Addiction’ Support Groups

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He would lay awake late into the night, talking to the bots and forgetting about their schoolwork. Using Character.AI is constantly on your mind. It's very hard to focus on anything else, and I realized that wasn’t healthy.” This led him to start the “Character AI Recovery” subreddit. Not everyone who reports being addicted to chatbots is young. In fact, OpenAI’s research found that “the older the participant, the more likely they were to be emotionally dependent on AI chatbots at the end of the study.” -404 Media

I’m on a search

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At the trial in which he would be sentenced to death, Socrates (as quoted by Plato) said that the unexamined life isn’t worth living. Reading is the best way I know to learn how to examine your life. By comparing what you’ve done to what others have done, and your thoughts and theories and feelings to those of others, you learn about yourself and the world around you. Perhaps that is why reading is one of the few things you do alone that can make you feel less alone. It is a solitary activity that connects you to others.

So I’m on a search—and have been, I now realize, all my life—to find books to help me make sense of the world, to help me become a better person, to help me get my head around the big questions that I have and answer some of the small ones while I’m at it.

Will Schwalbe,  Books for Living

32 Recent Articles about AI Fakes

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Israel and Iran use propaganda, disinformation and covert operations aided by artificial intelligence  - New York Times  

Florida woman conned out of $15K after AI clones daughter’s voice – WFLA

How a Canadian's AI hoax duped the media and propelled a 'band' to streaming success – CBC

A Marco Rubio impostor is using AI voice to call high-level officials – Washington Post

Panel with AI experts to review appeal of NTU student penalised for academic misconduct - The Straits Times  

Springer Nature book on machine learning is full of made-up citations – Retraction Watch

How "consumer-grade AI tools have supercharged Russian-aligned disinformation – Wired

How to Detect AI Writing: Tips and Tricks to Tell if Something Is Written With AI – CNET

How AI-generated content & misinformation are corrupting online academic resources, creating a "zombie" internet where errors and fake science perpetuate – The Dispatch  

Digital Literacy in the Age of AI: How to Fight Misinformation – Ed Tech Magazine  

AI Chatbots Are Making LA Protest Disinformation Worse - Wired

454 Hints That a Chatbot Wrote Part of a Biomedical Researcher’s Paper – New York Times

OpenAI takes down covert operations using social media tied to China and other countries – NPR 

Wired Envisions a Deepfake Future you’re not prepared for – Wired

AI is perfecting scam emails, making phishing hard to catch - Axios

Veo 3 AI video generator is a slop monger’s dream – The Verge

AI models hallucinate less than humans — just in “more surprising ways”  - Tech Crunch

Chicago Sun-Times Prints AI-Generated Summer Reading List With Books That Don't Exist – 404 Media

Trump signs bill criminalizing revenge porn and explicit deepfakes - TechCrunch

Fake AI images are already manipulating you, and this crazy controversy is proof - BGR

Musk's xAI blames Grok's "white genocide" responses on unauthorized update - Axios

Music streaming service Deezer adds AI song tags in fight against fraud – Associated Press

Scammers use AI to spoof senior U.S. officials' voices, FBI warns - Axios

A.I. Videos Have Never Been Better. Can You Tell What’s Real? – New York Times

Denmark to tackle deepfakes by giving people copyright to their own features -
The Guardian

AI has probably already faked one of your memories. Here's what that means – BBC

How to Spot Fake Reviews on Amazon – Wired

Journalist says 4,000 fake AI news websites created to game Google algorithms – Press Gazette

What Are Deepfakes? Everything to Know About These AI Image and Video Forgeries - CNET

AI and disinformation fuel political tensions in the Philippines – Al Jazeera 

AI is polluting truth in journalism. Here’s how to disrupt the misinformation feedback loop. – Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

A racist campaign message caused ire among Oklahoma Democrats. But it wasn't real, it was AI – The Oklahoman

The jobs of Experienced Coders

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The combination of higher salaries and a reluctance to embrace A.I. was likely to put the jobs of experienced coders at risk. “How you decrease cost is not by firing the cheapest employees you have. You take the cheapest employee and make them worth the expensive employee. In a recent study by researchers at Microsoft and three universities, an A.I. coding assistant appeared to increase the productivity of junior developers substantially more than it increased the productivity of their more experienced colleagues.” -New York Times

14 Ways to Spot AI Images & Video

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THE BACKGROUND. Are people in the background looking at the unusual thing going on? If they are going about their business, it is likely a fake. Often, the background of AI images will be distorted. Sometimes odd shapes in the background details are giveaways, such as floor tiles or walls.

OTHER VIDEOS & PHOTOS. If the video or image is of a news event and there are no other videos or images showing different angles, it may be AI-generated. It is unlikely that there would be only a single image or video of something odd or newsworthy.

DETAILS. AI generators are not good at details. For instance, the AI skin is smooth. It looks like the person is wearing lots of makeup, giving it a leathery appearance. The hair is course and fuzzy looking. Teeth are overly straight and will change width and shape throughout the video. The spaced between them will shift as well. Other details can be giveaways as well: shadows that are off, small objects shaped oddly, and although AI video generators are getting better at fingers, they still can be strangely shaped.  

WRITING. Look closely at writing on a sticker, street sign or billboard. Watch for blurry writing when it shouldn’t be or wrongly formed letters, or the letters that don’t spell words.

FOCUS. In a real video, anything that is in focus is sharp, while anything out of focus is naturally blurry. In AI videos, there is less of a difference between what is in and out of focus.

THE SOURCE. Is the person or organization sharing the image reliable and not known for promoting AI-generated media?

THE EYES. In deepfake videos, the eyes can pop or look glassy. People will sometimes blink oddly or else they make strange eye movements. Researchers at Cornell University found deepfake faces don’t blink properly. Also, by using techniques devised for measuring galaxies, researchers have found that deepfake images don't have the same consistency in reflections in both eyes.

THE FACE. Look carefully at the area around the face for evidence that it was swapped onto another person’s body.

THE LIPS. Do the lips have abnormal movements and unrealistic positioning?

MOVEMENT. Watch for unnatural jumps or the absence of motion blur that is typically present in authentic videos. If creators manipulate AI-generated photos using Photoshop techniques such as blurring or file compression, they can fool detection tools.

LIGHTING. AI images often have abnormal patterns in the physics of lighting. AI videos are often well-lit but have a softness to them.

PHOTOMETRIC CLUES. Look at “photometric” clues such as blurring around the edges of objects that might suggest they’ve been added later; noticeable pixelation in some parts of an image but not others; and differences in coloration.

FRAME RATE. Most AI videos will only produce a film quality look because they are made to look like they were shot at 24 frames per second videos. Most real videos are not made at that frame rate. Social media videos are typically shot at 30 frames per second (the default for phone cameras) while most sports video are shot at a higher 60 frames per second in order to capture the quick movement.

SOUND EFFECTS. Many purposely fake AI videos will add sound effects for a more dramatic impact. For instance, sirens, alarms and people screaming might make a clip seem more frightening.

More Signals

The Other Fellow

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When the other fellow is set in his ways, he’s obstinate. When you are, it’s just firmness. 

When the other fellow doesn’t like your friends, he’s prejudiced and narrow minded. 

When you don’t like his friends, you are simply showing you’re a good judge of human nature. 

When the other fellow tries to treat someone especially well, he’s buttering them up. When you do the same game, you’re using tact.

When the other fellow picks out flows in things, he’s cranky. When you do, you are discriminating and just be careful.

When the other fellow says what he things, he’s spiteful. When you do, you’re just plain spoken.  

AI companions & Loneliness

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An OpenAI study found “personal conversations with chatbots actually led to higher loneliness. Despite this, top tech tycoons promote AI companions as the cure to America’s loneliness epidemic. ‘It's like, when early humans discovered fire, right?’ Axel Valle, a clinical psychologist and assistant professor at Stanford University, said, “It's like, okay, this is helpful and amazing. But are we going to burn everything to the ground or not?’”-404Media

AI Definitions: Predictive Analytics

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Predictive analytics - This method of speculating about future events uses past data to make recommendations. Researchers create complex mathematical algorithms in an effort to discover patterns in the data. One doesn't know in advance what data is important. The statistical models created by predictive analytics are designed to discover which of the pieces of data will predict the desired outcome. While correlation is not causation, a cause-and-effect relationship is not needed to make predictions. This is ideal for anticipating what a user is most likely to be interested in based on past behavior and user characteristics. However, after gathering this data, data scientists will often turn to causal AI in order to gauge the impact on user behavior. Some people will use the terms “predictive analytics” and “predictive AI” interchangeably, but others will treat predictive analytics as a broader term that includes non-AI methods such as statistical modeling and regression analysis.

More AI definitions here 

13 Articles about Social Media & AI

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