KUALA LUMPUR, May 7 (2026 — Media organisations should leverage artificial intelligence (AI) beyond newsroom automation by monetising decades of archived data and audience insights to strengthen long-term business sustainability.
AI and digital transformation specialist Charles Gregory said media companies possess valuable datasets that can be repackaged for advertisers, businesses and specialised industries, giving them an advantage that influencers and other digital platforms do not have.
“Your data, your thing that you compile, I think that’s a goldmine that a lot of media probably have not tapped into yet… we use AI as a complementary, as a supplement to achieve what we want to do,” he told Bernama after being a panelist at the National Journalists’ Day 2026 Media Forum titled ‘Shaping the Future of Malaysian Media in the Digital and AI Era’ today.
Gregory said organisations should first determine their objectives, identity, and business direction before adopting AI tools, stressing that technology should complement human leadership rather than replace it.
“But if the thing is opposite, we focus only on AI, then we forget about the people, the management, the culture and the identity that media has. Objectives are very important,” he said.
Elaborating further, Gregory said the evolution of AI in media should be viewed similarly to previous technological shifts involving print, radio, television and the internet.
“We just need to go back to history, understand how they do, how they evolve, and use the same concept with AI. Then use AI to help you do that, because AI is very powerful,” he said.
However, he also cautioned that heavy dependence on AI could become costly and risky if organisations fail to calculate long-term returns on investment (ROI).
He said increasing dependence on AI platforms could expose businesses to rising operational costs and system vulnerabilities over time as well as concerns over cybersecurity and operational disruptions.
“People are talking about automation, but they do not calculate the ROI. In the beginning, it’s always cheap. It’s probably very free.
“But the more dependent we are, it increases (costs),” he said, while comparing the trend to pricing patterns seen in digital platforms and utility services.
Meanwhile, during the sharing session, Huawei Malaysia Cloud Solution Architect Cheah Chern Eu said media organisations in Malaysia are increasingly recognising the value of AI in improving productivity and efficiency across newsroom operations.
“…because when you’re looking into traditional journalism, it takes a lot of time.
“With AI, you can get information quicker. But the information still needs to be verified through a human-in-the-loop process. Humans also need to do fact-checking,” he also said.
He added that Huawei is expanding its technologies and innovations to help different industries adopt AI more quickly, not only in the media sector but across other industries as well.
— BERNAMA
