KUWAIT: Kuwait Times’ Summer Program interns visited, on Thursday, CODED, the first coding bootcamp in the Middle East, where interns took a workshop on how to use Generative AI in Journalism. On the sidelines of the workshop, Nawaf Al-Mutairi, instructor at CODED, highlighted the importance of AI in our lives, noting that he focused on teaching the interns how to use AI tools and prompt engineering to enhance their journalism.
He added "Interns explored how AI, including ChatGPT, can be applied in their work, from generating ideas to creating content. Through hands-on practice, the interns learned how to craft effective prompts and use AI tools to support their reporting and storytelling. This experience gave them practical skills to incorporate AI into their journalism, helping them stay ahead in today’s fast-paced media landscape.”
Mutairi indicated that CODED keened on its workshop to give insights into the distinctions between different generative AIs and prompt engineering techniques in order to equip interns with the skills to effectively harness AI for content creation, enhancing their ability to produce impactful journalism. The workshop covered the main available tools in Gen AI and how interns can use them for research and analysis.
In terms of journalism, Mutairi showed interns how to use AI for writing, editing, and proofreading, in addition to how not to fall for the "hallucinations” and the fabricated facts, such as false historical dates and inaccurate references or non-existent sources. He explained that AI was birthed in 1950 in the World War 2, where the Nazis used a device called the Enigma machine to encode their military communications.
These machine-made messages appear as a random series of letters, making it extremely difficult for anyone to read the messages without knowing the exact settings of the machine, noting that the word "Artificial intelligence” was first used in 1955. The workshop also addressed the "deepfakes” which are AI-generated media such as videos, images, or audio that create highly realistic but fake content, concluding that utilizes advanced machine learning models, like Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs), to manipulate or generate visual and auditory information.
Kuwait Times Summer Program is an annual course to engage young people in journalism and media-related events. It is designed to provide participants with hands-on experience in various aspects of journalism, including writing, reporting, editing, photography, and social media. Several classes are held along with training sessions conducted by experienced media professionals in order to make the participants get the full experience.