Associate Professor who uses GAI in journalism, and documentary to recreate his past father’s life.
As a British freelance journalist reporting from South Africa until its first all-race election (1992–1994) he embarked on some of the most hazardous assignments that included covering one of country’s most dangerous townships (Katlehong) at night with Peace Monitors.
Thirty years on this month since covering South Africa culminating in President Nelson Mandela’s inauguration, and now an academic, Dr David Dunkley Gyimah has been showing how news events like this help conceptualise a future journalism using Generative AI (GAI).
Cardiff University Associate Professor Dr Gyimah says his work shows what will inevitably be GAI’s multi-billion widespread use in journalism in the future. He’s recreated visual scenes from memory to complement actual audio of events, educating new generations in GAI’s use.
This week Open AI reported offering publishers, such as News Corp deals and the Wall Street Journal, Financial Times and MarketWatch between a reported $1 million and $5 million a year to have access to publishers archives to train its GAI models. Dr Gyimah says this relationship de facto will seek to legitimises GAI content eventually being used in non-fiction settings for consumer consumption.
Social-tech history spells out dominant media’s inertia to change at every major transition, he says. He cites the introduction of video journalism, (which collapsed the camera operator, reporter, and producer into one person) in the UK thirty years ago. Outlets like the BBC resisted it for five years claiming it lowered journalism’s professionalism before they capitulated. GAI will go much further.
However, Dr Gyimah acknowledges there are many issues that remain unresolved in creating AI policies in inclusive journalism. Last week the UK Press Gazette reported the low take up of GAI by journalists.
In July, Dr Gyimah will be presenting non-fiction AI work at the Storytellers and Machines Conference in Manchester, as part of twenty UK universities chosen to showcase their work alongside creatives and artists. It will include how he’s using GAI to recreate documentary about the life of his passed father.
Chairman: the Ghanaian has already received praise from industry figures and VIPs. The UK’s Channel 4 Board of Directors and influential British Screen Forum invited Dr Gyimah to present to them. Board member Adrian Wootton OBE, who is Chief Executive of Film London and Channel 4 Board Chair Daniel Battsek described Dr Gyimah’s work as “absolutely fascinating” and “terrific”.
In Ghana, Dr Gyimah was invited to a meeting with International statesman, John Kufuor, the country’s former President. On social media, its making attracted comments from prominent figures such as Henry Bonsu, Shirley Thompson and Marcus Ryder.
Identity politics
The short story comes this month amid a harrowing news story that a Ghanaian man was told by the UK Home Office that in spite of his 42 years in the UK, and paying his taxes, he was not British and would have to wait ten years for citizenship. Dr Gyimah says the story reminded him of his father, who passed away in 2006.
“My Dad came to Britain in the 1950s as a student. He was one of the first wave just before Ghana’s 1957 Independence, and like so many more thereafter made huge contributions to the country. In this climate, it’s so easy to think this story could be him. Ghanaians were a quiet force. My dad was originally a police officer in the Gold Coast”.
Dr Gyimah says he had limited pictures of his father but discovered a trove of letters he’d handwritten to family over the years describing his circumstances, and life in the UK.
He then trained the AI to replicate his father in various settings from family stories and letters. Some were so convincing his siblings started asking for the photos. He believes stories like this provide an understanding of the 1950s plus generation of British Ghanaians and West Africans.
At the heart of the storytelling is style of news journalism combining research from TikTok and cinema verite — originally driven by American filmmaker Robert Drew, behind Primary (1960). This form of cinema journalism marks natural trends in storytelling in which more visual, visceral styles arise and established one’s atrophy. Its reception has been tested on IBM’s AI Watson and audiences.
Yet, there’s a much wider issue behind this story, which addresses GAIs, its potential deployment, safeguards, tech’s use in the future, and the impact on employment, These include Journalists being adept at:
- Misinformation and disinformation in the era of Artificial Intelligence
- Ethical reporting and considerations in the era of misinformation/disinformation
- Content Verification Methods
The GAI wave comes amid an already fractured and dysfunctional web according to its inventor in an open letter posted on @medium in March 2024.
Sir Tim Berners Lee says the web in past ten years had been overtaken by self-interest by several corporations, hence undermining its utility. He says “Leadership, hindered by a lack of diversity, has steered away from a tool for public good and one that is instead subject to capitalist forces resulting in monopolisation”.
Serial Innovation
Dr Gyimah states the use of memory to construct stories will test trust and require fresh ways of evaluating stories. He refers to GAI as the equivalent to MI (Memory Intelligence)? Users will require a series of checks and balances ranging from users using their real names, against a matrix of data.
Dr Gyimah first started reporting on the web in 1995, seen here as a newscaster presenting its introduction to UK media. In 1999 he was working for several dotcoms in Soho and had a stint as launch editor for Justgiving.com.
In 2005 he was the first Brit to win the the Knight Batten Awards for Innovation in Journalism (reported in Press Gazette) for creating one of the first video web sites. In 2006 onwards as a leader in video journalism (VJ) he was tasked by the Press Association to turn UK regional press into VJs (reported in Press Gazette).
The film he made about the first wave of VJs , “8 Days”, won the international documentary award in Berlin 2006. Dr Gyimah is behind the cinema journalism movement and was part of a small Google team reviewing their European Innovation Challenge Fund in Paris.
In GAI much of what’s being created is in the realm of sci-fi, fictional stories, and disinformation, says the academic. Using it as non-fiction, as a journalistic tool, opens a new debate, and merits an inclusive interrogation about its future use.
For instance, Dr Gyimah points to policies like the Laval Decree in the 1930s-60s that prevented African filmmakers from filming in Africa. Whilst the policy covered mainly Francophone countries, in Anglophile Africa the de facto bar was commercial. The question then is how do you set out to create impactful diverse stories armed with verifiable testimonials, if the footage is not accessible?
Dr Gyimah’s forthcoming work called Frontlines for a major business conference is based around gender reversal and cultural roles. Women, Black women, are in the driving seat in a number of high-risk roles. For more info click here
