Kalli Purie outlines nine-point charter on AI use in media at AI Impact Summit

At the India AI Impact Summit in New Delhi, Kalli Purie, vice-chairperson and executive editor-in-chief of the India Today Group, presented a nine-point charter addressing the use of artificial intelligence in news media.

Speaking at a session organised by the Digital News Publishers Association on ‘AI and Media: Opportunities, Responsible Pathways, and the Road Ahead’, Purie said the use of AI in journalism should be guided by fairness, accountability and reciprocity. She cautioned that journalism risked being reduced to raw material for large language models without safeguards.

“Fair value for journalistic content is non-negotiable. We need transparency in how AI systems digest and metabolise news,” Kalli Purie said.

Her nine-point charter called for fair value and transparency in AI usage of news content, traceability and attribution, recognition of journalism as a public good, and penalties for AI hallucinations. It also addressed asymmetry between legacy media and social platforms, valuation of verified content, the treatment of citizens’ attention as a finite resource, and reciprocity from large technology companies accessing journalistic material.

Purie said news organisations shape public opinion and argued that accountability must rest with identifiable institutions rather than anonymous systems.

She added that the India Today Group has been using AI tools for over two years, describing its approach as human-led. “We love technology. We have AI anchors, AI clones, voice cloning, even AI-driven storytelling. But accountability for AI must have a human name attached to it,” she said.

She characterised the organisation’s workflow as an 'AI sandwich', with human intent at the start and editorial oversight at the end. “We don’t want to become one biscuit in an AI cookie-cutter world. We want to tell our stories, not AI stories,” she said.

Purie also raised concerns about what she termed 'digital imperialism', arguing that original reporting should not be used without compensation. “Indian reporters go to the ground, invest resources and take risks to bring original stories. Influencers and AI summaries should not eat out on that labour for free,” she said.

Media leaders from organisations including The Hindu, The Times of India, Amar Ujala and Dainik Bhaskar participated in the session. Discussions also focused on the need for structured dialogue between publishers and technology platforms, particularly in the context of declining referral traffic due to AI-generated summaries.