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Nicolas is a French-German journalist. He pioneered data-driven journalism in Europe, regularly speaks at international conferences, and taught journalism at several journalism schools in France, Switzerland and Russia. As a self-educated developer, he created interactive, data-driven applications for Le Monde. He built the data journalism team at OWNI and co-founded and managed Journalism++ from 2011 to 2017. Nicolas was one of the main authors of the Datajournalism Handbook.
In the run-up to the EU elections, AlgorithmWatch has investigated which election-related images can be generated by popular AI systems. Two of the largest providers don’t adhere to security measures they have announced themselves recently.
Automated systems go astray, they contribute to child sexual violence, deny people their social benefits, or block organizations' online presence. The affected people often feel helpless when their rights are violated, but some are taking up the fight while current laws fail to protect the victims.
We wanted to collect data on how newspapers wrote about AI. Swayed by the sirens of OpenAI, we thought that using a Large Language Model was the best way to do such a massive text analysis. Alas, we failed. But LLMs are probably not to blame.
Exactly one year ago, I wrote that automated systems might be regulated for good in 2023. This was too optimistic. Not only did European institutions fail to pass the AI Act, even in its watered-down version; the rise of generative models brought us to a new level of danger.
Automated image generators are often accused of spreading harmful stereotypes, but studies usually only look at MidJourney. Other tools make serious efforts to increase diversity in their output, but effective remedies remain elusive.
After the announcement that we offer a fellowship in algorithmic accountability reporting, we received over 100 applications and were overwhelmed by the quality and diversity of them. After a careful examination, we’re very happy to introduce our first six fellows, an outstanding group of journalists, academics, and a civil society activist.
Automated systems were surprisingly absent from this year’s major stories. On the regulation front, European institutions stepped up their efforts. How much change Europeans can expect depends on the institutions’ resolve, and the first test of 2023 already began.
In August, the Finnish delivery service Wolt published its first “algorithmic transparency report”. We asked three couriers about their experiences. They don't always match the report’s contents.
In the United States, automated systems purge voters rolls and verify signatures. They sometimes discard valid votes, especially in historically marginalized communities. Such systems are unlikely to be as widespread in the European Union.
The open-source social network gained millions of new users following Twitter’s takeover. While some of its features could improve the quality of public discourse, disadvantaged communities might be excluded.
Alternative social network Mastodon, which has no algorithmic timeline and a decentralized structure, is rapidly gaining steam. But the regulatory framework, which was built for billion-dollar companies, could dampen its growth.
Recommender systems, such as a social network’s news feed or a streaming service’s recommendations, are notoriously difficult to audit. Despite high hurdles, practitioners from journalism and academia are pushing forward.
Fellows will receive €1,200 per month during 6 months and will report on automated decision-making in Europe.
The Australian consumer commission accuses Meta of helping scammers defraud its users. The scams are global and the legal case could have repercussions elsewhere.
A US academic scraped videos off YouTube to train face recognition software on pictures of trans people. New research reveals that his methods were even more carefree than previously known.
AlgorithmWatch is delighted to announce that the Deutsche Postcode Lotterie is funding a decentralized newsroom to investigate automated systems in Europe.
A climate catastrophe in Germany and the revelations of the Facebook Files had one thing in common: the humans in the loop failed to take the right decisions. 2021 was not the year algorithms were reined in, but 2022 might be.
The European Council, which represents Member States, is pushing for a “narrow” definition of AI, which would dramatically water down the AI Act. The European Commission seems to be in agreement.
Facebook sent a cease-and-desist letter to Tim Grossmann, the creator of InstaPy, and blocked his accounts – and those of his start-up – on the platform.
Two national parks in southern France want to automate the detection of poachers, but the efficacy of these systems remains unclear.
The West Midlands police force, which controls 2.9 million persons around Birmingham, created its own independent ethics committee in 2019. Despite its work and its transparency, critics are not convinced that it is a solid enough counterweight.
First findings of a data donation experiment by AlgorithmWatch show that Die Welt, a conservative news outlet from the German media conglomerate Axel Springer, dominates the news section.
Using thousands of data donations from AlgorithmWatch’s Instagram monitoring browser plug-in, German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung showed that posts from the far-right appear higher on users’ timelines.
A feature on LinkedIn automatically rates candidates applying from another EU country as “not a fit”, which may be illegal. I asked 6 national and European agencies about the issue. None seemed interested in enforcing the law.