The AI Literacy Summit, hosted by NAMLE in 2024, brought together educators, scholars, NGOs, industry professionals, and students to address one of the most urgent questions of our time: How can media literacy education be most effective in the age of AI?

This highly participatory gathering invited attendees to roll up their sleeves and tackle real-world dilemmas at the intersection of AI and media literacy.

Purpose & Goals

The summit aimed to:

• Explore how AI literacy connects to and extends NAMLE’s definition of media literacy.
• Identify the challenges AI introduces, such as bias, sourcing, copyright, and misinformation.
• Share frameworks, tools, and strategies for teaching critical media skills in an AI-driven world.
• Generate recommendations for how educators can proactively prepare students for rapidly changing technologies.

Activities & Discussions

Throughout the day, participants engaged in interactive workshops and group discussions, including:

• Case Studies & Prompts — exploring how generative AI creates new media literacy problems and opportunities.
• Framework Comparisons — using Venn diagrams to map overlaps and differences between AI literacy and media literacy frameworks.
• Game-Based Approaches — testing tools like Which Face is Real?, Bad News, and Real or Not to evaluate whether traditional and emerging methods still hold up in the age of AI.
• Time Machine Reflection — imagining what advice we might have given educators at the start of social media—and applying those lessons to today’s AI landscape.

Why It Matters

Technological change often moves faster than education can respond. By bringing together diverse voices, the AI Literacy Summit underscored the importance of preparing educators and students not just to react to AI but to proactively shape how we use it in society.

The event made one thing clear: AI literacy is media literacy. Funding media literacy education is also funding the skills needed to navigate and critically engage with AI.