Spotlight Turns to AI’s Role in Shaping the Future of Journalism: World Press Freedom Day 2025
Posted: 6 May, 2025 Filed under: Hlengiwe Dube | Tags: AI, algorithmic curation, algorithms, Artificial intelligence, automated fact-checking tools, automated translation, biased news, ChatGPT, critical challenges, democracy, editorial decisions, ethical responsibilities, human rights, independent media, misinformation, multilingual content distribution, real-time content moderation, transformation, transparency, World Press Freedom Day 3 Comments
Author: Hlengiwe Dube
Centre for Human Rights, University of Pretoria
On 3 May 2025, the world observed World Press Freedom Day. This annual commemoration is a reminder of the important role that free, independent media plays in protecting democracy, transparency, and human rights. It is a day for governments to reaffirm their obligation to safeguard press freedom, for journalists and media professionals to reflect on ethical responsibilities, and for the public to honour the many courageous media practitioners who have risked or lost their lives in the pursuit of truth. In 2025, the theme of World Press Freedom Day is as urgent as it is visionary: Reporting in the Brave New World – The Impact of Artificial Intelligence on Press Freedom and the Media. The theme acknowledges the profound and accelerating impact of Artificial Intelligence (AI) on the field of journalism. As AI tools become more deeply integrated into the production, distribution, and consumption of news, this transformation brings with it both groundbreaking opportunities and critical challenges that demand global attention.
Impact of artificial intelligence on effective judicial protection
Posted: 26 June, 2023 Filed under: Jackeline Maribel Payé Salazar | Tags: access to justice, AI technology, AI-based programmes, algorithms, Artificial intelligence, automated court decisions, challenges, civil jurisdiction, COMPAS software, human rights, judge-robot systems, judicial protection, justice administration systems, predictable justice, regulatory frameworks Leave a comment
Author: Jackeline Maribel Payé Salazar
Lawyer
Introduction
Artificial intelligence (AI) makes a significant contribution to achieving timely and predictable justice. However, it is necessary to analyze the challenges that its use represents for the right to effective judicial protection. This right includes not only the right of people to access the courts of justice and to obtain a judicial decision in a reasonable period of time but also the right to obtain a decision duly motivated. This supposes that judicial decisions have to express the reasons on which they are based. In this sense, the author asks: is it possible to sufficiently guarantee the right to effective judicial protection if we use expert systems based on AI? What are the benefits of AI in the justice administration system? What is the “dark side” of AI? What are its limits, from the perspective of the right to effective judicial protection?
How would international human rights law deal with a potentially automized future?
Posted: 20 July, 2021 Filed under: Eduardo Kapapelo | Tags: algorithms, artificial intelligence technologies, autonomous weapons systems, aws, ‘self-aware’ autonomous weapons, Christof Heyns, Future Combat System Project, human rights, Human Rights Council, humanitarian law, law, legal, LGBTI, self-aware, targeted surveillance, Terminator 3 1 Comment
Author: Eduardo Kapapelo
Centre for Human Rights, University of Pretoria
Introduction
In a scene from Jonathan Mostow’s Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, the ‘Terminator’ played by Arnold Schwarzenegger says, ‘Cybernet has become self-aware’. While the context of such words are within a scripted science fiction world, they nevertheless seem to be echoes of a futures we seem to be writing – whether willingly or not.
While Mostow’s ‘killer robots’ or ‘terminators’ – are essentially autonomous weapons systems sent through time to kill a person seems farfetched and squarely within the realm of science fiction, perhaps it is not life imitating art, but art imitating life. The United States Future Combat System Project which aimed to manufacture a ‘robot army’ seems to have hinted that the future might not be as fictitious as we think.
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