When you hear the word artificial intelligence (AI), what do you think of?
Do self-driving cars come to mind? Or maybe you’re envisioning a robot waiting tables at your favourite restaurant. While these all seem like far-off future realities, a quick browse through the functions of your Smartphone will show you that AI already plays a huge role in how we communicate.
Unsurprisingly, this hugely impacts everything from our everyday social interactions to the media we consume.
A new book edited by Raquel Benitez Rojas, Associate Dean of the Master of Arts in Digital Media and Global Communications program at the University of Niagara Falls Canada (UNF), delves into these ideas. Titled Revolutionizing Communication: The Role of Artificial Intelligence, it was released this month through CRC Press and co-edited by Francisco-Julián Martínez-Cano, Associate Dean of the undergraduate Audiovisual Communication program at the Universidad Miguel Hernández (UMH) in Elche, Spain. Through 16 case studies, the book analyzes the role of AI across the communications field.
“[The case studies] show how communication is affected by AI use in different countries and for different purposes,” said Benitez Rojas. “In some ways, it’s has helped us communicate better.”
To mitigate the fear around AI, the book focuses on how to counteract its negative aspects while still recognizing it as a helpful tool. This is especially evident in the growth of automated journalism, which is a process by which AI collects, interprets and presents data in a digestible news story. It comes with definite upsides, a significant one being that the automation of routine tasks, such a data collection, can leave journalists with more time to pursue complex stories. However, the process can also be used in a way that manipulates text and other media in a way that miscommunicates facts or spreads fake news. Additionally, an AI system trained on data sets that reflect social or cultural biases will include them in its final products. For the latter particularly, Benitez Rojas emphasizes a very human reliance on critical thinking skills.
“To prevent biased outcomes, it’s important that the data we introduce to an AI system is always clean. Like with traditional journalism, we need to check our sources to see where information comes from and how it’s analyzed,” she explained.
By implementing ethical frameworks around the use of AI, even practices that we may deem somewhat unnerving can be used for social good. This is highlighted in the case study “The Deepfake Technique Used for Creative Advertising from a Social Perspective” by Rocio Cifuentes Albeza, a professor in the Audiovisual Communication program at UMH. A deepfake is audiovisual content produced by AI to resemble a real or fictional person. In 2019, the Mexican non-profit organisation Propuesta Cívica, in conjunction with the advertising agency Publicis WW México, used deepfake technology to create a likeness of journalist Javier Arturo Valdez Cárdenas for its advertising campaign Seguimos Hablando (or Still Speaking Up in English). This version of Valdez Cárdenas, who was murdered in 2017, then urges the president of the Republic of Mexico to address the violence faced by Mexican journalists and the country’s lack of freedom of the press. Although his likeliness is AI generated, it still gives the campaign a human face and acts as a powerful motivator for driving social change.
AI’s benefits don’t stop at one or two methods. The remaining case studies expand on its applications across the communications spectrum, including the ability to encourage human creativity through interactive storytelling, reshape and even improve customer service with human-to-computer interactions, and streamline business processes. One study from Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU) demonstrates how the adaptive AI algorithm in video games like Mario Kart Wii can help teachers develop lessons that are both fun and customizable to each student’s individual needs. The key to creating these sorts of outcomes, as emphasized by Benetiz Rojas, is viewing AI as a helpful add-on to human intelligence rather than a replacement.
“For academia in particular, AI is a fantastic research tool,” she said. “In my classes, I promote it as a resource and not a way of presenting assignments. As an example, my students can go to ChatGPT and ask it which topics would be appropriate to write about for a certain assignment.”
Benitez Roja’s ultimate hope is to present a broad vision of AI that includes both its flaws and enormous potential.
“AI is not the future. It’s the present, and we must embrace it. Readers of this book will better understand the concept of AI and, more importantly, how to use it wisely within their own work.”
Revolutionizing Communication: The Role of Artificial Intelligence is available in ebook format the UNF Library.
