Check against delivery - Speech by Bjørn Berge, Deputy Secretary General of the Council of Europe

Ambassador Ndiaye, Excellencies, dear friends,

Artificial intelligence can write a book.

Well, I am sure it can write millions of books.

Millions of books, poems, essays or articles.

It can make videos and invent photographs and artworks.

But AI does not interpret the world.

It does not apply its unique personal lens to interpret, analyse and create.

Rather, it sucks in data and spews it out in what looks like a fully formed piece.

But it isn’t.

It is simply a façade — a veneer of polish, layered onto a mountain of code.

Work produced by AI lacks humanity — it lacks thought — and it lacks empathy.

Those three elements are evident in abundance in the pieces by the young winners of the “Free Word” competition, three of whom are with us here today.

Theodor Slaaen Borge, Vy An Doan and Alexander Røed Tjøsvoll, a warm welcome to Strasbourg and congratulations!

And I congratulate also Helleik Gram Kleivan, Gunnar Máni Thorgeirsson, who worked with Alexander on their entry.

The depth of your vision is something that could never be copied or faked.

Theodor’s photographs, taken at Utøya, interpret a place — a landscape — that holds a terrible collective memory for the Norwegian people.

He evokes a lonely silence, even in the beauty of the island.

He tells a deeply tragic human story.

Vy An’s prose touches us with her nostalgia for something she was denied — the opportunity to grow up in the land of her heritage.

Her essay is full of complex ideas, delivered with great accomplishment — because they are her own ideas, and because she has sought to understand the story of her people — taking it and making it hers.

And Alexander and his colleagues have managed to encapsulate in their film many of the elements that go to the very heart of the plague of disinformation in 2025.

He tells the story of a protagonist — feeling pressure applied to him by the constant deluge of social media he receives every day, who signs up to a website in a Faustian pact that promises to change his life, and which in return steals his life, his image and uses it for evil purposes.

And that — of course — is exactly what the current plague of disinformation so often does — turning real people into victims of technology deliberately misused.

And often it seeks to disconnect us, polarising our society, reinforcing insecurities, and feeding hate.

Dear friends,

But how do we, today, defend democracy against the tsunami of disinformation that floods all forms of media every day?

And how do ordinary people understand the difference between fake and fact — between truth and carefully curated lies?

Artificial Intelligence is an incredibly powerful tool — that on the one side — makes fake information harder to detect and is targeting individuals with tailored content.

But on the other side can help us detect disinformation and enhance our fact-checking efforts.

We must therefore use AI as a weapon against the spread of lies and disinformation.

Yes, disinformation is a major challenge, but another thorn in the side of truth is the worldwide assault on press freedom.

Journalists attempting to report the truth are facing increasing threats, including physical assaults, legal challenges, and online harassment.

Journalists are arrested and detained in Europe today — and even killed.

So safeguarding journalists and upholding press freedom are truly essential for ensuring the dissemination of accurate information.

And we must address the rising number of press freedom violations to help maintain free and informed societies within strong, resilient democracies.

Education is another weapon in our armoury.

We must do what we can to enhance media literacy, by providing education that focuses on critical thinking and the ability to assess sources of information.

And we should make sure we better understand why we as individuals and communities are so susceptible to mis- and disinformation.

To this end, Project RESIST is a flagship Council of Europe program, grounded in the Reykjavik Principles for Democracy, and aimed to bolster democratic resilience.

RESIST seeks to empower citizens through media literacy, critical thinking, and cross-sector collaboration in the fields of education, youth, and culture.

And throughout Europe, formal fact-checking organisations, too, play a crucial role.

These groups often follow standards set by the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN).

The code has so far been signed by 35 organisations from 27 countries.

Major news outlets like Reuters and the BBC have started their own fact-checking sections where journalists show how they verify information.

Finally, we should also encourage the users themselves to come together and form groups that raise the alarm when they see lies, fake news and disinformation on the net.

Also holding social media companies accountable for the content shared on their platforms can certainly also help reduce the spread of disinformation.

So stronger and smarter laws are needed, as well as better oversight of social media platforms.

Dear friends,

It is in our power to counter lies with facts, with law, and with education.

It is in our power to encourage young people, like the winners of the Free Word competition, whose words and images have at their heart the truth.

You see that truth actually exists — and it is not alternative facts — and it is not an algorithm.

Truth essentially goes to the very heart of our knowledge and education.

And defending truth must be the foundation in our defence of democracy itself.