The Executive Secretary of the National Media Commission, George Sarpong, has called for smart regulation of artificial intelligence (AI) in broadcasting to balance the stability of law with the rapid pace of technological innovation.
Speaking during a panel discussion at the Broadcasters Convention 2026 in Accra, Mr Sarpong said regulators must avoid creating regulatory systems that cause unnecessary panic whenever new technologies are introduced.
He said AI should fundamentally be understood as technology that enables machines to perform tasks that ordinarily require human intelligence, adding that this could have applications across almost half of the broadcasting value chain.
“The question then is: What can regulators do to assist in this process?” he asked, stressing the need for regulatory approaches that understand the pace and nature of technological development.
Mr Sarpong said regulation presented a particular challenge because law and technology operate according to different principles.
He noted that while the life of the law was characterised by stability, technology was driven by disruption, creating the need for regulators to find ways of bridging the gap between the two.
“We need to be extremely careful about how we construct regulatory systems in the field of AI,” he said.
According to him, regulators should seek to understand emerging technologies before crafting regulations around them, while ensuring that regulation creates the necessary parameters for technology to operate.
Mr Sarpong also highlighted the need for greater consideration of African languages in the development of AI systems.
He said many large language models were trained on datasets that did not adequately represent African languages, a situation that could affect the ability of AI systems to recognise and work effectively with African content.
“Particularly in the area of broadcasting, if we are going to work on our content and have recommender systems that recognise our content, then we need to work on the language models within the context of AI,” he said.
He further identified trust, technology adoption and access to the resources needed to power AI systems as issues requiring attention from policymakers and regulators.
Mr Sarpong said policy and regulatory systems needed to engage with these issues to create the necessary environment for the growth of AI technology.
