The BBC, the UK's largest news organization, has set out principles it plans to follow when evaluating the use of generative artificial intelligence, including research and production of news, archives and "personalized experiences". BBC national director Rhodri Talfan Davies said in a blog post that the broadcaster believed the technology offered the opportunity to "deliver even more value to our viewers and society".
The three guiding principles are that the BBC will always act in the best interests of the public, prioritize talent and creativity by respecting the rights of artists, and be transparent about AI output.
The BBC said it will work with technology companies, other media organizations and regulators to safely develop generative artificial intelligence and focus on maintaining trust in the news industry.
Davies said in the "Next Months": "Over the next few months, we will launch a series of projects to explore the use of GenAI in our products and the way we work, taking a targeted approach to better understand the opportunities and risks. These projects will assess how GenAI can potentially support, complement or even transform the BBC's activities in a range of areas, including news research and production, content discovery and archiving and personalized experiences."
The company did not specify the projects.
Other news organizations also expressed their views on the technology. The Associated Press issued its own guidelines earlier this year. It has also partnered with OpenAI to share its story of training GPT models.
But while the BBC was deciding how best to use generative AI, it apparently blocked OpenAI and CommonCrawl's web crawlers from accessing the BBC website. It joins CNN, The New York Times, Reuters and other news organizations in blocking web crawlers from accessing their copyrighted material. Davis said the move was to "safeguard the interests of license fee payers" and that using BBC data to train artificial intelligence models without their permission was not in the public interest.