Workshop held with the AI + Documentary Working Group, the joint initiative between the Co-Creation Studio at MIT Open Documentary Lab and WITNESS, the human rights media organisation.
The group has been working since 2018 on the intersections between artificial intelligence and non-fiction, through research, publications, speaker series and advocacy that includes submissions to the United Nations. It brings together technologists, documentarians, artists, policy makers and human rights advocates to examine how AI is changing documentary practice, how it affects creative integrity and the spread of misinformation, and how a documentarian can work with these tools while covering the industry that produces them.
Artefacto’s session concentrated on that last point, which is where the uncomfortable part of the question sits. Using a technology and keeping the distance needed to report on it calls for concrete decisions about what gets generated, what is declared to the viewer and what material is better left untouched.
The group has opened its monthly meetings to a wider informal membership and maintains an open resource base of readings, films, projects and tools.
