FAIRmedia

The rapid change in media consumption, the development of the media landscape and the associated challenges for democracy are the focus of the FAIRmedia project. The project focuses on the interface between media, artificial intelligence (AI) and data sovereignty and aims to support media professionals in meeting these challenges and to strengthen the essential role of the media in democracy. The focus of the project is on developing a toolbox for efficiently creating trustworthy data sets from current and archived content from Austrian media organizations and using them to train AI models.

DURATION: 11/2023–10/2025

Fair and trustworthy application of artificial intelligence in the media

Project details

Most of the data sets used to train AI currently come from organizations outside the EU, particularly from the US and China. This not only leads to dependencies on global technology companies, but also carries the risk that relevant data sets can be withdrawn at any time. Furthermore, there is a risk that AI tools and data sets developed outside Europe do not meet European standards and legal frameworks, such as the GDPR and upcoming AI regulations.
 

The main objectives of FAIRmedia are:

  • Creating a framework for the efficient creation of fair and trustworthy data sets: The focus is on current and archived content from Austrian media organizations to ensure a locally produced, trustworthy basis. This also allows regional characteristics (e.g. locally used words or phrases) to be reflected in the created data sets. The creation is supported by tools for analyzing the balance of data sets.
     
  • Creation of no-/low-code tools: These tools enable the creation of datasets and the training of AI models without in-depth programming knowledge. The target groups are various actors in the media industry, such as journalists, editorial managers, audience managers and archivists. Through local training, the data remains under the control of the media companies.
     
  • Development of post-hoc explanation tools for AI models: These serve to better understand the trained models and provide comprehensible explanations and hints regarding the balance of data sets.
  • Demonstration of the tools: using use cases for classification and for content verification using question answering.
     

FAIRmedia has the potential to strengthen data sovereignty in Europe by creating datasets that are fully controlled by Austrian media organizations and developing training methods that can be used by media professionals without in-depth prior knowledge. The project thus opens up new ways for media organizations to effectively use AI technologies and contribute to the European Media Data Space.