Nearly 500 media representatives from about 330 mainstream outlets gathered in Beijing on Saturday for the 7th World Media Summit, a global forum that brings together journalists, think‑tanks and government bodies from 112 countries and regions, as well as the United Nations and other international organisations.
The summit, organised jointly by Xinhua News Agency and the Beijing Municipal Government, was held under the theme “Media in the Intelligent Age: From Consensus to Action”. Initiated in 2009, the World Media Summit has become a major platform for media exchange and cooperation; the previous edition was hosted in Urumqi, Xinjiang, in 2024.
Li Shulei, a member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and head of the CPC’s Publicity Department, delivered the opening keynote. During the ceremony Xinhua announced the adoption of the “7th World Media Summit Beijing Consensus”, which calls for joint efforts to advance the transformation and development of the global media industry in the AI era.
“Recognising AI’s growing role in media development, the consensus commits to advancing the inclusive and responsible application of AI in the media sector so that advances in AI benefit media organisations at all stages of development and in every country.”
The summit also launched the Global Media Initiative for the Joint Development of AI Application Standards. The initiative, spearheaded by Xinhua, aims to safeguard information authenticity, protect data security and uphold media ethics, thereby maintaining public trust. The first 22 participants include Russia’s TASS News Agency, Malaysia’s National News Agency (Bernama), South Africa’s Independent Media, China’s People’s Daily and China Media Group.
Under the initiative, the participating organisations will collaborate for roughly two years to create a set of AI‑application standards tailored to different media uses and validated by the outlets themselves. The plan also calls for the creation of a global database of AI applications to support the standards‑development process.
<small>Source: The Sun Nigeria — read the original story there.</small>
