5 December 2025

As part of the ARIJ 18th Forum held from 5 to 7 December 2025 in Jordan, ARIJ organized a specialized workshop on Friday, December 5, titled “Co-Creation: Journalism and the Use of AI in Content Creation.” The workshop featured 14 trainers from the #AI_بالعربي  project. Through his project, more than 3,400 journalists, media professionals, and media students in 15 Arab countries have been trained on the fundamentals and ethics of using AI in journalistic work.

The workshop aimed to explore the vital intersections between journalism and Artificial Intelligence, highlighting the ethical and professional opportunities and challenges arising from integrating these tools into media organizations. It focused on providing practical insights to empower journalists to utilize AI as a co-creation partner to enhance efficiency, rather than perceiving it as a competitor.

The workshop was led by Dr. Georgios Terzis, a Professor of Communication and Ethics at the Brussels School of Governance with extensive experience teaching media ethics and political communication, and Dr. Abit Hoxha, an Assistant Professor and Researcher at the Institute of Northern and Media Studies at the University of Agder in Norway, who has a research background in digital media studies and societal transformations.

The workshop covered three main axes: Prof. Georgios focused on the ethics and professional standards for using AI in journalism, while Prof. Abit discussed the reinvention of journalism and scenarios for collaboration between journalists and smart systems powered by AI technologies (Co-creation).

Participants emphasized the importance of the skills acquired. Abdullah Wild Sidiya, a Mauritanian correspondent for “Al Araby TV”, noted that “ethics are the foundation of journalistic work, especially in the field of AI usage,” confirming that what he learned will be “essential in his work for verification and scrutiny before publication.”

Hanan Zbeiss, an investigative journalist from Tunisia, stated that the most important outcomes of the workshop included “improving the method of prompt engineering to get better results, in addition to understanding the ethical challenges,” indicating her intention to transfer this knowledge to the journalists she will train in the future.

For his part, Ahmed Gamal, a fact-checker at the “Akhbar Meter” platform in Egypt, pointed out that mastering “advanced prompt engineering represents one of the most significant challenges he faces as a journalist and fact-checker,” affirming that the workshop provided him with new horizons and skills that will contribute to improving his ability to use AI technologies.

It is worth mentioning that ARIJ initiated its focus on AI to support investigative journalism and fact-checking in 2021, leading to the launch of a comprehensive Arabic AI strategy in 2023, designed to reshape the future of journalistic work across the region.