Towards Ethical AI Guidelines for Sri Lankan Newsrooms

The Sri Lankan chapter of the South Asian Women in Media – (SAWM-SL) partnered with the Sri Lanka Press Institute (SLPI) to host a national consultation on developing guidelines for the ethical use of AI in Sri Lanka’s media sector.

Held at Mandarina Colombo on February 10, 2026, the consultation marked the first initiative of its kind in the country to bring together media decision-makers, senior editors representing print, broadcast and digital media, and senior journalists and heads of media organizations to deliberate on how newsrooms should govern the adoption and deployment of AI technologies.

Centred on a presentation by Dr Sanjana Hattotuwa titled ‘Ethical use of AI by media: A case for Sri Lankan guidelines’, it drew on international best practices, including AI policies and frameworks developed by leading news organisations such as The New York Times, The Guardian, BBC and Al Jazeera, as well as ethical standards advanced by UNESCO, the Paris Charter on AI and Journalism, European Federation of Journalists and the World Association of News Publishers.

Participants examined how these global principles, centred on human oversight, transparency, bias auditing based on gender, ethnicity and religion, authorship, and copyright compliance could be meaningfully adapted to Sri Lanka’s legal, cultural and newsroom realities.

The discussion was notably interactive, with the participants, led by Dr Hattotuwa, agreeing that while AI presents powerful opportunities for innovation, efficiency and investigative depth, its adoption must be grounded in ethical safeguards, mandatory human editorial oversight for AI-generated material and protocols for reporting on AI-generated abuse without reproducing harm. It reflected a growing consensus within Sri Lanka's media community that AI governance cannot be reactive, but proactive, principled and inclusive, ensuring that technological advancement does not come at the expense of safety, equality or journalistic integrity.

SAWM-SL undertook to consolidate these contributions into a draft set of ethical AI guidelines tailored to Sri Lankan newsrooms and convene a dedicated group from among those present to take the discussion forward.

The consultancy formed part of the broader initiative titled ‘Enhancing Understanding and Knowledge of AI among Female Journalists’, supported by the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Sri Lanka.

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Pictures by J. Sujeewakumar