CTRL+J APAC 2025 Day Two: Spotlight on AI, Local Languages, and Data Justice

Jakarta, 23 July 2025 – The Indonesian Cyber Media Association (AMSI), the Alliance of Independent Journalists (AJI), and the International Fund for Public Interest Media (IFPIM) are currently hosting the regional conference CTRL+J APAC 2025. This three-day seminar, taking place from 22–24 July 2025 at Le Meridien Hotel in Jakarta, aims to strengthen cross-border collaboration across the Asia-Pacific region to establish quality journalism standards in the era of Artificial Intelligence (AI). The event brings together journalists, media practitioners, academics, and digital technology actors.

On the second day of the conference, the panel “Preparing the Future: The State of Play in APAC” featured three speakers, including Filipino multimedia journalist Jacque Manabat, who shared her experience in practicing journalism in the AI era. Jacque uses social media platforms such as TikTok to produce up-to-date news content. As a "newsfluencer"—an influencer who delivers news—she continues to apply journalistic methods in her work, including fact-checking, verification discipline, and adherence to the journalistic code of ethics.

“We still apply journalistic methods, just in different storytelling formats,” said Jacque. Meanwhile, researcher Irendra Radjawali from Kyoto University, Japan, highlighted that “Data fed into AI is highly biased, as it is mostly created by Western and white programmers. So it is neither complete nor all-knowing, as we tend to assume,” he explained.

The panel “Preparing the Future: Compensation Strategies” featured four speakers. Nelson Yap, Deputy Chair of the Public Interest Publishers Alliance (PIPA), Australia, presented the current media funding landscape in his country. “Journalism is a critical public infrastructure, and the Australian government acknowledges this. In 2025, the government allocated $99 million in grants for news organizations over a three-year period,” Nelson revealed.

The Australian government also launched a News Bargaining Code, mandating tech giants like Google and Meta to negotiate with publishers. Nelson contrasted this with the situation in Canada, where tech companies blocked news content on their platforms. “These initiatives are pushing platforms to either enter or update agreements with news publishers. At the same time, the U.S. is threatening higher tariffs against Australia for regulating tech, while these companies continue to extract value from news organizations,” he added.

In the panel “Preparing the Future: Amplifying Diverse Voices and Addressing the Language Barrier in AI,” four speakers took the stage. Shalini Joshi, Program Director for Training and Network at Meedan, explained that AI fact-checking tools are now available in 31 Asian languages to support media and civil society organizations in expanding their content. Dr. Leslie Teo, Senior Director of AI Product at AI IG, presented SEA-Lion, a large language model focusing on Southeast Asian languages, especially local languages such as Javanese and Ambonese.

Ayu Purwarianti, a researcher from the AI Center at ITB (Bandung Institute of Technology), introduced the Nusa Dialogue project, which documents Indonesia’s regional languages using data sourced directly from native speakers and local dialect users.

In the panel “Preparing for the Future: Publishers’ Preparedness and Engagement Strategy in the Era of AI,” two speakers shared their perspectives. Sergio Spagnuolo, Executive Director of Nucleo Journalismo (Brazil), stated that both Indonesia and Brazil have very permissive AI policies. “Only 5–6% of media websites block at least one AI agent via their robots.txt file. In contrast, 35% of U.S. sites do. We’re about to release a tool to help publishers generate their own robots.txt files and block unwanted bots,” he explained.

Meanwhile, Matt Prewitt, President of the RadicalxChange Foundation, emphasized that journalists must ensure their content is protected and properly licensed, depending on the level of data being used. “They need to organize to negotiate with tech companies regarding AI access and information sharing. Failing to control access to your content will result in further market erosion for media organizations,” he warned.

This is the press release for Day 2 of the conference. For further inquiries, please contact:
sarahervina@amsi.or.id and naharin@ajiindonesia.or.id