AI can’t replace accountability, assert media titans

New Delhi: As artificial intelligence rapidly reshapes the global information ecosystem, it was Kalli Purie, Vice Chairperson and Executive Editor-in-Chief of India Today Group, who delivered the sharpest and most urgent intervention at the AI and Media session of the summit.

Purie made it clear that the conversation is no longer about whether AI will transform media, but whether media institutions will retain control over how that transformation unfolds.

“AI is not creating accountable information,” she said candidly. “What you’re creating is AI slop.” In a digital environment already flooded with speed-driven and unverified content, she warned that AI can “create an illusion of trust” a phenomenon potentially more dangerous than visible misinformation.

Yet her position was not anti-technology. On the contrary, she stressed proactive adoption with safeguards. “In our side, on the India Today Group, we love technology,” she said. “We’ve been working on AI for about two and a half years.” The distinction, she explained, lies in governance. “The accountability for AI has a name.”

Purie described what she termed the “AI sandwich” model: “Human intent starts the AI exercise, you have AI in between, the final decision is a human being.” In her view, the future newsroom must integrate AI operationally, but never surrender editorial authority.

Her most forceful remarks addressed technological sovereignty. “We definitely need a sovereign India stack,” she argued, warning that unchecked reliance on foreign AI systems risks what she described elsewhere as “digital imperialism.” For Purie, building domestic AI capacity is not protectionism, it is preservation of narrative independence.

Echoing the primacy of credibility, Navaneeth LV, Chief Executive Officer of The Hindu Group, reminded that technological sophistication alone cannot generate legitimacy. “Trust is not generated by technology,” he said. “It’s produced by institutions.”

Navaneeth emphasised that AI’s strongest newsroom use case lies in contextualisation, using archival depth to interpret present developments. But such systems, he indicated, must remain rooted in proprietary, verified content rather than open web aggregation.

Tanmay Maheshwari, Director of Amar Ujala Publications, framed the debate through a pragmatic lens. “AI is just another technology,” he observed. “There’s going to be an upside and a downside.” Drawing a parallel with nuclear science, he added, “It can be the most devastating bomb in the world, and that’s the cleanest source of power. It’s about how you use it.”

Maheshwari cautioned against inflated expectations. “The accuracy level of AI right now is around 50 to 55 percent,” he noted, underscoring the continued necessity of editorial oversight. “We don’t see AI as a replacement of anything,” he said. “We see AI as a tool to improve the quality of the news.”

For him, AI’s value lies in automating repetitive processes so journalists can devote more time to verification and field reporting.

The economic consequences of AI were articulated by Mohit Jain, Executive Director of Bennett, Coleman & Co. Ltd. (The Times Group).

He warned that when AI systems aggregate, summarise and distribute journalism at scale, they are no longer neutral conduits but active participants in public discourse. The underlying issue, he suggested, is whether original publishers will receive fair value and attribution for the intellectual property that trains and feeds these models.

Adding a regional dimension, Pawan Agarwal, Deputy Managing Director of Dainik Bhaskar Group, stressed that India’s scale and diversity require differentiated approaches. AI cannot be deployed in India as a copy-paste of Western regulatory or platform frameworks, he argued, particularly in a country with varying levels of digital literacy.

Meanwhile, Robert Whitehead, Secretary General of the International News Media Association (INMA), underscored the global urgency of regulation and IP protection. AI systems, he suggested, are already disrupting the economic foundations of news publishing worldwide, and sustainable solutions will require structured marketplace frameworks.

The discussion was contextualised at the outset by Sujata Gupta, Secretary General of the Digital News Publishers Association (DNPA), who highlighted that AI is fundamentally reshaping how news is “gathered, curated, disseminated, and trusted.” The session’s theme: opportunities, responsible pathways, and the road ahead, reflected the dual imperative of innovation and accountability. The editorial consensus emerging from the panel was nuanced but firm. AI will undoubtedly enhance efficiency, personalisation and scale. But journalism is not merely a content industry, it is a democratic institution.