San Francisco, Jul 9 (IANS): In a bid to help small media publishers reach new audiences and drive more traffic to their content, the Google News Initiative (GNI) has launched a training academy for 20 media professionals to learn how Artificial Intelligence (AI) can be used to support their journalism.

Google is partnering with Polis, the London School of Economics and Political Science's journalism think tank, to launch the training academy, it said in a statement on Thursday.

The AI Academy for Small Newsrooms is a six-week long, free online programme taught by industry-leading journalists and researchers who work at the intersection of journalism and AI.

It will start in September this year and will welcome journalists and developers from small news organisations in the Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) region.

By the end of the course, participants will have a practical understanding of the challenges and opportunities of AI technologies.

"They will learn examples of how to use AI to automate repetitive tasks, such as interview transcription or image search, as well as how to optimize newsroom processes by getting insights on what content is most engaging," Google said.

Most importantly, participants will create action plans to guide the development of AI projects within their news organisations.

JournalismAI will share these plans openly to help other publishers around the world.

JournalismAI is a partnership between the GNI and Polis to forester AI literacy in newsrooms globally.

More than 110,000 participants have already taken the online training modules available on the Google News Initiative Training Centre.