By The Copilot & Musso Media Editor

Generative AI can now create high-quality images and videos in seconds. But as the technology accelerates, a more fundamental question is emerging:

Can AI-generated media ever be trusted at scale?

In this episode of The Media Copilot, Pete Pachal speaks with Dr. Yair Adato, founder and CEO of Bria, about a growing divide in the AI ecosystem. On one side are models trained on vast, scraped datasets. On the other are systems built around licensed data, attribution, and control.

“This is by far the most advanced technology humanity has created,” says Dr.  Adato. “…and it took six years, not fifty.”

At stake is not just quality, but ownership, accountability, and the future economics of creativity.

Listen or watch:

• YouTube
• Spotify
• Apple Podcasts

Why this matters

The generative AI boom has largely focused on what these models can do. Less attention has been paid to how they are built and who benefits.

As brands, media companies, and enterprises begin to integrate AI into real workflows, concerns around copyright, likeness rights, deepfakes, and data ownership are no longer theoretical. They are operational risks.

This conversation reframes the debate:

The future of AI may depend less on better models and more on building systems that businesses can actually trust.

What we cover

• Why “brand-safe” AI is becoming a business requirement, not a feature
• The case for licensed data and a new attribution-driven data economy
• How generative AI could reshape ownership and compensation for creators
• Why visual AI presents higher stakes than text models
• The limits of current models and the push toward greater control and transparency
• How enterprises are integrating AI into real production workflows
• The tension between automation and creativity in media and storytelling
• Why AI will handle the “average” and humans will still define what is exceptional

About the 👤 guest  

LinkedIn

Americans for Ben-Gurion University feature

Bria (official site)

Bria AI LinkedIn

Bria AI Instagram

Bria AI Facebook

About the show: To explore more conversations like this and see what’s new, visit the freshly updated Media Copilot website at mediacopilot.ai. You’ll find new episodes, expanded resources, and tools designed for journalists, communicators, and media leaders navigating the fast-changing world of AI. It’s the home base for everything Media Copilot and it’s just getting started.

Enjoyed this episode?

Subscribe to The Media Copilot on Substack, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite app. On YouTube?  Tap the Like button and Subscribe to the YouTube channel.

For more AI tools and resources built for media professionals, visit MediaCopilot.ai.

Produced by Pete Pachal and Executive Producer Michele Musso
Edited by the Musso Media Team 

Music: “Favorite” by Alexander Nakarada, licensed under CC BY 4.0

All rights reserved. © AnyWho Media 2026

The post The real battle in AI isn’t capability. It’s trust. appeared first on The Media Copilot.

Most newsrooms that have adopted AI policies have done something admirable — and insufficient. A new briefing from the Center for News, Technology & Innovation synthesizes 30 peer-reviewed research papers on AI governance and finds that existing policies get the principles right but skip the operational details journalists actually need to follow them.

The CNTI report, released Feb. 17, is the third briefing from the organization’s AI and Journalism Research Working Group. Reviewing policies from 52 global news organizations across 12 countries, researchers found that newsrooms consistently prioritize transparency about AI use, human supervision of AI tools and human verification of outputs. But few policies define what “appropriate” or “proper” AI use actually means in practice.

The gap matters. As one example, AI translation tools can introduce gender biases — assuming doctors are men, nurses are women — that a journalist using a third-party tool may never catch. Existing policies focus on AI outputs, not the systems that produce them, making these subtle errors nearly invisible.

The procurement blind spot is arguably the bigger problem. Researchers found almost no AI policies that address how newsrooms should evaluate, contract with or monitor third-party AI vendors. A 2025 study of 16 AI tool contracts found that most gave developers the right to change terms of service without notice — a risk most individual journalists aren’t even aware of. Meanwhile, newsrooms’ growing reliance on tools built by Google, Microsoft and Amazon deepens their dependence on the same platform companies that already control much of their distribution.

The policy gap isn’t limited to the Global North. A Thomson Reuters Foundation survey of 221 journalists in the Global South found that roughly 80 percent said their newsrooms have no AI policy at all. That number has likely improved since the survey was conducted, but the structural barriers — no access to technical expertise, difficulty getting organizational buy-in, the pace of technological change — haven’t gone away.

The working group’s practical recommendation: treat AI policy development the way you treat coverage decisions. Include people with different job responsibilities and lived experiences. Draw on the lessons of earlier technology policy cycles — photo editing, social media — where the same tension between values and operational specifics played out. And start thinking seriously about procurement: what your AI contracts actually say, who can change them, and whether your organization has the leverage to push back.

For most newsrooms, the answer to that last question is no — but knowing that is the first step toward addressing it.

The post New Research: Newsroom AI policies strong on principles, weak on practice appeared first on The Media Copilot.

AI is already embedded in how people discover and consume news, from search to chat interfaces to automated summaries. So the question is no longer whether journalism will be shaped by AI. It’s how newsrooms maintain trust while experimenting responsibly.

In this episode of The Media Copilot podcast, Pete Pachal sits down with Alex Mahadevan, Director of MediaWise and a faculty member at Poynter, to unpack what media literacy looks like now that anyone can generate convincing content at scale. Alex shares how his background in data and local journalism shaped his approach to tools, why public-facing AI ethics policies matter, and what it will take for news organizations to bring audiences along for the next phase of the information ecosystem.

Why this matters

Trust is the core product. AI can either widen the trust gap with errors and low-quality content, or help rebuild credibility through transparency, better products, and clearer communication about how journalism is made. This conversation gets practical about what responsible AI use looks like, where disclosures help and where they can unintentionally slow innovation, and why the newsroom AI divide is becoming a real competitive advantage for organizations that adapt.

What we cover

• Alex’s journey into journalism and the global mission of MediaWise

• How AI is reshaping misinformation, trust, and newsroom transparency

• Practical uses of chatbots, coding agents, and AI workflows

• The widening divide between AI enthusiasts and skeptics in newsrooms

• Ethics, job concerns, and gray areas around AI-assisted writing

• What the future of news may look like beyond traditional articles

• Watch on YouTube
• Listen or watch on Spotify
• Listen on other podcast services

About the 👤 guest 

🔗Alex Mahadevan

🔗Poynter / MediaWise 

🔗MediaWise

About the show: To explore more conversations like this and see what’s new, visit the freshly updated Media Copilot website at mediacopilot.ai. You’ll find new episodes, expanded resources, and tools designed for journalists, communicators, and media leaders navigating the fast-changing world of AI. It’s the home base for everything Media Copilot and it’s just getting started.

Enjoyed this episode?

Subscribe to The Media Copilot on Substack, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite app. On YouTube?  Tap the Like button and Subscribe to the YouTube channel.

For more AI tools and resources built for media professionals, visit MediaCopilot.ai.

Produced by Pete Pachal and Executive Producer Michele Musso
Edited by the Musso Media Team Music: “Favorite” by Alexander Nakarada, licensed under CC BY 4.0All rights reserved. © AnyWho Media 2026

The post Fake news at machine speed: inside AI’s impact on media trust appeared first on The Media Copilot.