Speakers at an event on Saturday urged the government to publish an update on the National Artificial Intelligence Policy 2024 and finalise it through a consultative process.
They made the call at a webinar titled Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Journalism in Bangladesh on the occasion of World Press Freedom Day 2025, said a press release.
Organised by Voices for Interactive Choice and Empowerment, a rights-based research and advocacy organisation, the event brought together journalists, civil society members, human rights defenders, legal experts, technologists, and researchers.
The panel featured Rezwan Islam from Engage Media; Sharmin Khan, legal consultant at the International Centre for Not-for-Profit Law; Md Saimum Reza Talukder, senior lecturer at BRAC University鈥檚 school of law; Miraj Ahmed Chowdhury, founder and executive director of Digitally Right; Minhaj Aman, research coordinator at Digitally Right; and Tajul Islam, journalist at the Business Standard.
Tajul Islam said that AI tools were increasingly being used in Bangladeshi newsrooms to automate certain tasks and expedite content delivery but the technological divide in media access must be addressed and awareness about the responsibility of sharing news must be created to prevent the spread of fake news.
Highlighting an absence of AI policy in newsrooms, Rezwan Islam said, 鈥楢I is beneficial to research and helps save time but it cannot write an article as it does not have the experience and judgement of the journalist.鈥�
鈥楴ow the biggest challenge is that mass people are not being able to trust media anymore, so AI should be leveraged to combat biased information, cross-check data,鈥� he added.
Md Saimum raised concerns about how keyword filtering was influenced by political decisions and how platforms were shadow-banning content, limiting its reach to audiences.
He called for AI regulation to be grounded in human safety, emphasising that local norms and values must be incorporated into AI policies.
Miraj Ahmed Chowdhury discussed the challenge of copyright in the context of AI, noting that the issue would be tool-specific for derivative content.
Sharabon Tohura, consultant at Nijera Kori, highlighted how misinformation on platforms like YouTube was consumed by elderly people and could reach epidemic levels, stressing the need for digital literacy campaigns.
鈥楯ournalists, human rights activists, and civil society actors must be consulted for formulation of a people-friendly AI policy,鈥� said Ahmed Swapan Mahmud, executive director, VOICE.
