Partnership on AI European Steering Committee: Synthetic Media and Transparency

The Partnership on AI (PAI) European Steering Committee is the organization’s first regional advisory body, which convenes leaders from academia, civil society, and industry to examine how evolving AI technologies intersect with Europe’s social, technical, and governance ecosystem.

As a member of the committee, Professor Roda contributed to the session devoted to synthetic media and transparency documentation. This is a topic that has moved to the center of AI governance debates as generative AI capabilities expand and the EU Code of Practice process moves into implementation.

The discussion was anchored by PAI’s recently published report, Advancing Transparency of AI-Generated Media in the EU Code of Practice, which brings together nearly a decade of PAI research on synthetic media with concrete recommendations for the regulatory framework now taking shape in Europe.

At the heart of the meeting was a question that the report addresses directly: transparency is not one thing. It is based on an ecosystem of mechanisms and stakeholders as described in PAI’s Synthetic Media Framework.

Equally prominent were the questions of how transparency signals actually land with real people, the integration of different frameworks and standards, and the importance of terminological coherence across the transparency ecosystem. PAI has developed a Glossary for Synthetic Media Transparency precisely to address this fragmentation, and participants noted its relevance to the Code of Practice implementation process.

The PAI European Steering Committee meets regularly to advise on PAI’s work in Europe, including on the implementation of the EU Code of Practice, emerging accountability tools, and the implications of new generative and agentic AI capabilities. Professor Roda looks forward to continuing to contribute to this important work.