Fabrice Fries was in Lisbon for the spring conference of the European Alliance of News Agencies (EANA), which the CEO of Agence France-Presse (AFP) also chairs, which took place at the end of the week.

Asked about the role of AI for news agencies, the CEO says that the technology is seen, "mainly as a productivity tool".

In other words, "that increases the productivity of our journalism", the manager emphasizes.

"At AFP, we do not produce content with AI. I think it is the same with most EANA members", but "that may change", he warns, highlighting that the hallucination of 'Large Language Models' (LLM) makes the information unreliable.

LLM hallucination occurs when the information given by the AI system, although it seems coherent, presents incorrect, erroneous or biased data.

However, "there are many opportunities that AI opens up, we can generate new revenue, find new customers", but it is also "a concern, namely for media customers if they are disintermediated by AI", especially if the search engine becomes a response mechanism and stops directing traffic.

In short, he says, "it is at the same time a tool that can help 'fact-checkers' to verify better, but also - and I fear that the concern is greater than the opportunity that exists - it can democratize disinformation because anyone now with an AI tool can produce 'deep fakes'".

'Deep fakes' are videos manipulated using artificial intelligence, and are one of the major concerns of governments, international organizations and citizens.

Currently, "we see a lot of 'deep fakes' on the market and the biggest concern, for me, is this general distrust of journalism", because people no longer know who they can trust.

"And that's the biggest concern I have", he laments.

This is because before the advent of artificial intelligence there was already a lack of trust, now there is also the "concern about AI tools and what they can produce" and their impact, he says.

Asked about the role of news agencies in this process, Fabrice Fries explains that "news agencies have the mission of exposing the facts impartially".

Therefore, "it is a very modern and useful mission (...) and difficult" and "we do not always succeed", he continues.

But, "we are extremely useful precisely because today disinformation is massive, because there is a polarization of debate in each country" and "we are here to produce honest journalism, factual information", says the CEO of AFP.

"If we stick to this mission and present results correctly, I think once again that we will continue to be very useful for society and for democracy as a whole", he concludes.

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