Artificial Intelligence Programs

At The Lenfest Institute for Journalism, we explore how technology can strengthen the business of local news and empower the public-service impact of journalists without undermining either. That has been core to our mission since the Institute’s founding, and it is the central goal of our work with artificial intelligence. 

The Lenfest Institute’s AI programs represent one of the largest efforts in American local journalism to explore practical, responsible, ethical uses of AI across the field. Our work spans grants for technical experimentation, fellowships, hands-on implementation, convening, online and in-person training, and investments in shared infrastructure. It includes: 

• AI Collaborative and Fellowship: Embeds technical talent inside news organizations and gives them resources, platform credits, and broad latitude to explore how AI can strengthen local news businesses and their public benefit. 
• AI Training Programs: Designed to help journalists and news leaders build practical AI skills, understand where the technology is useful and where it is not, and apply it responsibly in their own work, policies, personal careers, and organizations.
• Local News Infrastructure Fund: Strengthens the underlying technology and shared infrastructure that local publishers depend on, including work to help publishers adopt useful AI-enabled capabilities.
• Expert Network: Provides hands-on consulting from in-house and third-party experts, including support for AI tool implementation. The Network helps local news organizations put practical AI applications into use, including vetted products from our Fellowships.

These programs allow us to work across the full arc of how AI might be applied in local news. We give independent local news organizations room to experiment, champion promising ideas, help journalists and practitioners understand and harness the technology, and develop the infrastructure they rely on — all to support strong, diverse news enterprises that can meet consumers’ news and information needs over the long term.  

What we stand for

We believe AI presents an opportunity to help enable a renaissance in local news and information, but that opportunity is by no means guaranteed. It depends on the choices and commitments news organizations, funders, technology companies, and the people building and using these tools make along the way.

Journalists have a duty of care to seek the truth and report independently while minimizing harm. News organizations should apply the same principles to how they approach new technologies, including artificial intelligence.

We treat AI as a broad category of technology, not as a single product. Useful applications may involve large language models, coding assistants, data tools, machine learning, automation, or systems that do not use generative AI at all once they are built.

Here are the 5 principles behind our approach to AI in local news: 

1. Start with journalism and the people it serves

News organizations should begin with their purpose: What does their community need from them? What problems are worth solving? Where could technology help?

When AI is used in service of accuracy, independence, accountability, human judgment, and community, we can leverage the opportunities it presents rather than treat it primarily as a threat.

2. Give the power of choice to news organizations

We design our programs so that our grantee partners have latitude to decide which problems are worth prioritizing and solving, and which tools are right for the job.

We believe user needs should drive news organizations’ work. The Lenfest Institute and companies that co-fund the work with us do not prescribe what gets built or which technologies are used. 

3. Be ambitious about what AI could make possible

Other industries are putting serious money and talent against AI. Journalism should take its own AI future just as seriously. We are interested in a broad range of experiments, from practical workflow improvements to uses of AI in journalism that haven’t been invented yet.

AI makes it relatively easy for people to try things that once seemed impractical or have long been on their technology wish lists.

Having an expert guide the process, along with strong collaboration, makes that experimentation faster and safer and increases the chances of learning what works and what does not.

4. Opportunity and guardrails have to develop together

News organizations should establish clear, transparent rules for where AI may be used, how it is constrained, and how and when its use is disclosed. They should not use AI to justify demoting reporters or relaxing journalistic standards.

Responsible experimentation requires both a good offense and a strong defense: exploring what the technology can make possible while protecting journalistic integrity, sensitive information, intellectual property, and public trust.

5. Journalism should shape its own AI future

Dismissing or underestimating the change happening around us is a major risk for journalism — indeed for any business. The Internet transition of the 1990s taught the news industry some very big lessons about arriving late and underinvesting in technological change.

We will work with technology companies, foundations, publishers, researchers, users, and others who can contribute capital, expertise, and ideas. We do not advocate for any one company’s model, product, or worldview. We seek— and have found— like-minded partners who share our principles and from whom we can learn. We are eager to partner and to learn more. Please join us.