Annual Meeting 26: Our public flagship conference
On November 6, we are inviting to our yearly international flagship conference on media technology and AI. This is a public event and this year’s focus is:
Media AI at the Crossroads: Innovating with Trust and Safety
— and we’d love for you to join us. Please register below.
The day is open to everyone: media professionals, researchers, students, technologists, and anyone curious about where media tech and AI are headed. It is a great opportunity to network, learn, and explore what is happening locally, nationally and internationally.
Joning us this year are Ezra Eeman (Strategy & Innovation Director, NPO, Netherlands), Prof. dr. Claes de Vreese (Professor, University of Amsterdam), JC Lopez (Director of Data & AI, Schibsted News Media), Kayleen Devlin (BBC Verify), Alex Moltzau (KI NORGE), Nicolás Grossman (project Director, GIRAI Index), Larissa Magalhães (researcher, University Bremen, GIRAI Index), Anastasiia Klimashevskaia (Researcher, University of bergen, GIRAI Index), Skander Ben Attia (CTO, France TV), Prof. dr. Andreas Vlachos (Cambridge University) Stuart Jennings (Engineering Manager, AI Security Institute, London) and Prof. dr. Johanna Pirker (Technical University Munich).
You can expect a full day of demonstrations, posters, presentations and panel talks, all centred on what is important in media technology and AI right now. From theoretical frameworks to hands-on research and practical tools, the event offers a broad look at current projects and ongoing developments in the field.
Exchange ideas, and expand your view on how media tech can be developed and made more responsible for the future – with Trust and Safety.
KEYNOTE SPEAKERS
Ezra Eeman
Strategy & Innovation Director
NPO, Netherlands
Bio
Ezra Eeman is the Director of AI in Media at WAN-IFRA. He previously served as the Strategy and Innovation Director at NPO, the Dutch Public Broadcaster. Ezra writes a weekly industry newsletter, Wayfinder, about media innovation and is the author of the annual “Wayfinder Trends Report”. In the past, he served as Change Director at the international media company Mediahuis, where he was responsible for coordinating newsroom transformations and digital acceleration across a wide range of cross-media brands. Before that, Ezra was the Head of Digital at the EBU, the European Broadcasting Union, and has held positions at VRT (the Flemish public broadcaster) and VTM (the Flemish commercial broadcaster) as innovation lab head and editor-in-chief, respectively.
Keynote Speech
Title: The Agentic News Map: Six Choices That Will Shape Media Abstract: As AI shifts from a tool inside the newsroom to an interface between publishers and audiences, familiar assumptions about news products and business models are being tested. Through six interactive questions, Ezra will explore possible futures for audience habits, story formats, newsroom workflows, trust, discovery and value capture. For each, the audience will consider both what seems likely by 2030 and which direction publishers should choose to strengthen. Current signals and examples will show where publishers can act now, and what to watch as the landscape changes.
Prof. dr. Claes de Vreese
Professor
University of Amsterdam
Bio
Claes Holger de Vreese is Professor of AI and Society with a special emphasis on Media and Democracy. He co-directs the Amsterdam based AI, Media and democracy lab, he is the founder of the Digital Democracy Centre (SDU) and he is currently Chair in Residence at the Danish Institute of Advanced Study.
Keynote Speech
Title: Old and new challenges for democracy in the AI era Abstract: AI is creeping into democratic processes and institutions. It is in news, search, vote advice, politics, and campaigns. This creates new challenges and adds to existing challenges. The keynote will offer an overview and a forward-looking agenda.
PRELIMINARY PROGRAM
REGISTRATION & HOUSEKEEPING
08:00 | Registration Opens
08:55 | Event Introduction & Housekeeping
WELCOME ADDRESSES
09:00 | TBA1, TBA2, Christian Birkeland (Chief Digital Officer, TV2), Christoph Trattner (Professor & Director, MediaFutures)
KEYNOTE SESSION
09:15 | Keynote 1: Old and new challenges for democracy in the AI era
Speaker: Claes de Vreese (Professor, University of Amsterdam)
09:45 | Moderated Q&A
Moderator: Erik Knudsen (Professor, UiB)
10:00 | Keynote 2: The Agentic News Map: Six Choices That Will Shape Media
Speaker: Ezra Eeman (Director of AI in Media, WAN-IFRA)
10:30 | Moderated Q&A
Moderator: Alain Starke (Assoc. Professor, UiB)
10:45 | Conference Picture & Coffee Break
SESSION 1: Immersive, Liquid and Adaptive Media
11:05 | Talk 1: TBA
Speaker: Johanna Pirker (Professor, TU Munich)
11:20 | Talk 2: Journalism Beyond the Destination: Liquid Content, AI Platforms and the Next Media Business Model.
Speaker: Victorina Demirel (Schibsted News Media)
11:35 | Talk 3: TBA
Speaker: Skander Ben Attia (CPTO, France TV)
11:50 | Moderated Q&A
Moderators: TBA
12:05 | Lunch Break
SESSION 2: Verification, Fact-Checking and AI Alignment
13:15 | Talk 1: Verification in the Age of AI
Speaker: Kayleen Devlin (Senior Journalist, BBC Verify)
13:30 | Talk 2: Facts in the Era of LLMs
Speaker: Andreas Vlachos (Professor, University of Cambridge)
13:45 | Talk 3: TBA
Speaker: Stuart Jennings (Manager, AISI, London)
14:00 | Moderated Q&A
Moderators: Vinay Setty (Assoc. Professor, UiS)
14:15 | Coffee & Cake Break
SESSION 3: Responsible AI, Global Governance and Norway’s Role
14:35 | Talk 1: The Global Index on Responsible AI 2026: Insights on Norway in Global and Regional Context
Speaker 1: Anastasiia Klimashevskaia (AI Researcher, University of Bergen, GIRAI Index)
Speaker 2: Nicolás Grossman (Project Director, GIRAI Index)
Speaker 3: Larissa Magalhães (AI Researcher, University Bremen, GIRAI Index)
15:05 | Talk 2: International Collaboration on AI Security and Safety: Norway’s New Position.
Speaker: Alex Moltzau (Policy Officer, KI NORGE)
15:20 | Moderated Q&A
Moderators: TBA
15:35 | Coffee Break
PANEL SESSION: AI Adoption, Trust and Control in Norwegian Newsrooms
15:55 | Company Pitches
- Marianne Gade Gørbitz (CTO, DN Media Group)
- Chris R. Hermansen (Head of Editorial AI, TV2)
- Lasse Lambrecht (Head of AI, Bergens Tidende)
- Erik Bonesvoll (Utviklingsredaktør, Amedia)
- Victorina Demirel (Head of Data & AI Enablement, Schibsted)
- TBA (NRK)
16:10 | Moderated Panel Debate
Moderators: TBA, Medieklyngen
16:40 | Refreshment Break
DEMO & POSTER SESSION
16:55 | MediaFutures Project Presentations // The Vital Project
17:10 | Poster Pitches
Moderated by: TBA
- Quick 1-2 minute pitches from poster presenters
17:30 | Interactive Demos, Browsing & Networking
18:30 | Poster Awards
18:45 | Transition from Conference to Finger Food and Drinks
Kayleen Devlin
Senior Journalist
BBC Verify
Bio
Kayleen Devlin is a Senior Journalist with BBC Verify, specialising in open-source investigations, misinformation and data-led reporting. Her recent work has included investigating the obscuring of sensitive sites in satellite imagery of China, examining the real-world consequences of online misidentification and false claims, and tracking maritime activity and the consequences of conflict in and around the Strait of Hormuz.
Talk Abstract
Title: Verification in the Age of AI Abstract: What does verification look like when misinformation can have real-world consequences and AI is adding new layers of uncertainty? This talk will explore the practical approach to verification, drawing on real cases where false information has affected real people. It will also look at some of the ways we assess suspected AI material, and the limits and opportunities within this field.
Skander B. Attia
CPTO
France TV
Bio
Skander Ben Attia holds a telecommunications engineering degree (Télécoms Tunis) and an MS from Telecom ParisTech (2009). He began his career in 2007 at Orange, where he held various positions (technical architect, functional architect, project manager, and program manager), working on diverse areas such as Voice over IP (VoIP), contactless payment, and identity management.
In 2016, he joined a company specializing in the Defense sector as Head of Project Delivery for governmental clients in Europe and Africa, before joining France Télévisions in 2019 as Deputy Director of Engineering and Process Support within the Technology and Information Systems Department.
On September 10, 2024, he was appointed Director of Engineering, Process Support, and Media Factory and took on the interim role of Director of Technology and Information Systems (CTO) in September 2025, before being confirmed in this position on February 1, 2026.
He also completed the Media Executive Program from the EBU (European Broadcasting Union) in 2023.
Since May 11, 2026, Skander Ben Attia has been Director of Product and Technology.
Andreas Vlachos
Professor
University of Cambridge
Bio
Andreas Vlachos is professor of Natural Language Processing and Machine Learning at the Department of Computer Science and Technology at the University of Cambridge and a Dinesh Dhamija fellow of Fitzwilliam College. Current projects include dialogue modelling, automated fact-checking and imitation learning. He has also worked on semantic parsing, natural language generation and summarization, language modelling, information extraction, active learning, clustering and biomedical text mining. His research team is supported by grants from ERC, EPSRC, ESRC, Facebook, Amazon, Google, Huawei, Cambridge Language Sciences, DARPA, Imminent and the Alan Turing Institute.
Talk Abstract
Title: Facts in the era of LLMs Abstract: Fact-checking, the task of assessing whether a claim is true or false, is considered a key weapon against misinformation. In the first part of this talk I will present our work on automating this task using natural language processing. In the second part of this talk, I will discuss how fact-checking enters our conversations and how internet users engage in constructive disagreements and problem-solving deliberation.
LOCATION
