IMPACT OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (AI) ON PROFESSIONAL JOURNALISM IN SINDHI MEDIA: AN ANALYSIS

Abstract

Pakistan's Sindhi media is using Artificial Intelligence (AI) for better storytelling, engagement with the audience in Sindhi language and to counter fake news. AI's fact-checking feature helps to build trust in the Sindhi community but there are some barriers that make it difficult for Sindhi media to effectively use AI. The role of AI to help Sindhi journalists in verifying real and fake news is examined.

 The research is qualitative and is based on semi-structured interviews with experienced journalists and staff of Sindhi media outlets (KTN News, Sindh TV, Time news, Mehran TV and Awaz TV). Nine journalists or editors with at least 10 years of experience in using AI for the creation, verification or sharing of news were selected from Hyderabad/Karachi who have used AI for Sindhi journalism.

The findings showed that while AI use in newsrooms in Sindhi media channels boosts productivity and potentially cuts cost, it raises ethical issues due to lack of awareness and training. Policies and training are needed to ensure ethical use of AI for Sindhi journalists in Sindhi newsrooms. There are also language barriers, as there are no AI services that provide tools trained with Sindhi corpora.

 The research discovered that in the absence of digital literacy and regulatory policies, Sindhi media companies can abuse AI technologies, which can result in misinformation or mistrust among Sindhi people. So, it is important to plan the roll-out of training, ethics and laws that are specific to the regional Sindhi media environment. These are crucial to ensure that AI is used for the betterment of Sindhi media, provides news authenticity and creates a trustworthy media culture in the fast-growing digital environment of Sindh.