Bengaluru, India – The “elephant in the room” is Artificial Intelligence, according to Prof. Sunil Saxena, Founder-Director of the AI Media Academy, as he addressed leading Indian media executives at WAN-IFRA’s AI in Media Forum on February 23, 2026. Saxena’s metaphor underscored the growing urgency of understanding AI’s impact on newsroom practices and the long-term viability of news businesses.
The forum, hosted by the World Association of News Publishers (WAN-IFRA), served as a “reality check” on the current state of AI adoption within Indian publishing houses, examining its practical effects on daily workflows. Discussions revealed a spectrum of approaches, ranging from cautious experimentation to more aggressive integration.
Sowbhagyalakshmi K.T., Director of The Printers Mysore, publisher of the Deccan Herald and Prajavani, described her company’s initial focus on utilizing AI for search engine optimization (SEO), data tagging, and coding tasks, primarily within their digital and technology teams. Editorial teams have shown a mix of “resistance and curiosity” towards AI, she said, but the company is piloting AI-powered translation tools to expand content reach across its publications.
The Printers Mysore is adopting what Sowbhagyalakshmi termed a “human sandwich” model, integrating AI assistance while retaining journalist input at the beginning and end of the editorial process. This approach aims to leverage AI’s capabilities without sacrificing journalistic judgment.
In contrast, Collective Newsroom, the BBC’s Indian-language content provider, maintains a highly restricted approach to AI, explicitly excluding its utilize in content generation. Mukesh Sharma, Co-founder & Deputy CEO of Collective Newsroom, emphasized the paramount importance of trust associated with the BBC News brand. AI is currently employed for curation, translation, and basic clip editing, always accompanied by clear disclaimers regarding its use.
Collective Newsroom has innovatively applied AI to address security concerns for journalists operating in countries with authoritarian regimes. The company is experimenting with voice transformation technology, using AI to anonymize journalists’ identities and mitigate potential risks.
Thomson Reuters, however, is pursuing a more proactive strategy. Tresa Sherin Morera, Senior Editor, Publishing & Production, stated that the agency’s goal is to “augment” existing capabilities with AI. AI has been integrated into their “Leon” content management system for proofreading and packaging multimedia assets for global distribution.
Manorama Online is also prioritizing a human-centered approach to AI implementation. Santhosh George Jacob, Coordinating Editor, stressed that “every stage of production has to be supervised by a human,” with final oversight before publication. He noted that Manorama Online has not experienced a decline in search traffic, likely due to its focus on Malayalam-language content.
However, Jacob acknowledged a slight decrease in search traffic for their English-language content, potentially attributable to AI-powered answer engines and changes to Google’s search algorithm. Sowbhagyalakshmi K.T. Reported a similar trend for Deccan Herald.
The forum also addressed the challenges of AI performance across India’s diverse linguistic landscape. Sharma highlighted a noticeable gap in the quality of AI tools for English and Hindi compared to other Indian languages, attributing this to a lack of sufficient training data for less-represented languages. Saxena added that regional language presses often possess a deeper understanding of local nuances related to caste, religion, and gender than the datasets used to train most language models.
Saxena posed the question of whether AI will increase, decrease, or have no impact on trust in media over the next five years, sparking a discussion about the ongoing crisis of trust in the news industry. Panellists generally expressed optimism, viewing AI as a potential ally in rebuilding trust.
Sowbhagyalakshmi K.T. Suggested that AI could assist journalists in analyzing complex information, such as lengthy court judgments, thereby enhancing accuracy and credibility. Sharma emphasized the crucial role of newsroom leadership in determining how AI is utilized, advocating for its use in tasks like data scraping and content enhancement to bolster trust. Morera called for a collective effort to explore how AI can improve journalism “better, faster and responsibly.”
Jacob cautioned that AI is still in its early stages of development and will likely turn into significantly more powerful in the future, requiring publishers to proactively “tame this beast” while upholding core journalistic values.
