Some thirty media executives from Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean are calling for “stricter” regulations to protect media content in the face of ongoing technological upheaval, in a declaration signed on Thursday 20 March at the VIII Congress of Editors, held in Cartagena de Indias (Colombia).
“The foreseeable exponential advances in technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) must be properly taken into account. Stricter regulations in areas such as ‘deepfakes’ and recommendation algorithms, as well as respect for copyright, must be strengthened”, stress the signatories of the declaration.
The members of the Editored network, to which Agence Europe belongs, believe that media content should not be fed into generative AI programmes until at least 48 hours after publication. It should also be up to the providers of AI-generated content to prove that they are using the media content legally. And, according to the signatories of the declaration, the media should be able to “voluntarily” terminate agreements for the use of media content for the production of AI-generated content without such exclusion affecting their indexing on online search engines.
In their statement, the participating media also reiterated the importance of fact checking systems to verify the sources used and as a “basic guarantee” for the exercise of the right to information.
In early 2025, Meta announced its intention to replace the ‘fact checkers’ system in the United States with a mechanism based on ‘community ratings’ (see EUROPE 13554/3).
EU/CELAC. At the congress, participants also discussed political and economic relations between the European Union, Latin America and the Caribbean in the run-up to the EU/CELAC summit to be held in Bogotá in the first week of November, according to information released by the Colombian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Laura Sarabia (see EUROPE 13602/28).
Against a backdrop of geopolitical upheaval, this summit should enable the leaders of the sixty participating countries to reaffirm fundamental principles, such as respect for international law, the Rule of law and territorial integrity, and to promote multilateralism as a method of tackling international challenges such as climate change. Together, the CELAC countries have the critical mass to carry weight in international forums such as the UN and the G20.
In Bogotá, the question of a permanent mechanism to monitor the commitments made at previous summits could be raised again (see EUROPE 13225/1).
To see the ‘Cartagena Declaration’ (in Spanish): https://aeur.eu/f/g35 (Original version in French by Mathieu Bion)