From October 1 to 3, 2026, the b° future Festival takes place in Bonn, organized by the Bonn Institute and focused on journalism and constructive dialogue. I’m glad to be part of it this year with a talk of my own.
A Festival for Newsrooms and Constructive Journalism
The b° future Festival is aimed primarily at people from newsrooms, media organizations, and adjacent institutions thinking about the future of journalism. It’s organized by the Bonn Institute, which has spent several years working on constructive journalism as a response to crisis fatigue and eroding trust in traditional newsrooms. The festival itself has been running for a few years now, with previous editions in 2023, 2024, and 2025, and it keeps growing visibly year over year. Over three days, editors, journalists, and people from related institutions come together for talks, panels, and conversations that all circle back to the same core question, how journalism keeps the public’s trust in an increasingly fragmented and accelerated media landscape.
Who Decides What Gets Shown
On October 2, I’ll be speaking at Haus der Bildung about who actually decides, inside a newsroom, what gets shown, and what that has to do with trust. The talk is called “Who Decides What Gets Shown: Editorial Accountability in the Age of AI.” My argument is that the AI-generated image itself isn’t only the problem, it’s really the editorial decision of how it gets selected and embedded. Using current examples, I show exactly how these decisions determine whether trust actually holds up.
The topic connects directly to what has occupied me intensely over the past months, from the Slopaganda thesis to the liar’s dividend. At its core, it always comes down to the same question, who decides what counts as credible once real and generated content can barely be told apart.
Why the Audience at b° future Festival Fits
Because b° future is aimed at newsrooms specifically, this is a particularly fitting setting for the topic. Anyone who reviews images daily, checks sources, and makes publication calls now regularly faces the question of whether a photo, a video, or a quote is real, and whether labeling something as AI-generated actually builds trust or just sows additional doubt. My talk sits right at that intersection between technical possibility and editorial responsibility, working from concrete examples rather than general warnings about AI.
Date and Location at b° future Festival
The talk takes place on October 2 from 4:00 to 5:00 PM at Haus der Bildung, Room 1.58. Access requires a festival ticket. More details on the session are on the event page, and tickets for the whole festival are available through the ticket shop. The full program with all speakers is on the festival page.
If you’d like, you can also take a look at my speaker profile at b° future Festival.
Beyond the Single Talk at b° future Festival
For anyone wanting to go deeper after October 2, the topic lives on outside the festival too. In workshops for newsrooms and communications teams, I work with teams on exactly these decision points, when an AI-generated image is even worth considering, what labeling should look like, and how to arrive at a consistent internal line instead of deciding case by case every time. In the end, that’s the difference between a newsroom that reacts to every new AI incident as it comes up and one that has already worked out where it stands before the next case appears.
If you’re interested in a talk or workshop on this topic for your newsroom or organization, feel free to reach out through michael-schwertel.de.
For more on my talks about AI’s place in media, communication, and society, see this page.
