China's Xinhua News Agency and Indonesia's Antara News Agency have agreed to deepen cooperation on the use of artificial intelligence in their newsrooms, after the two agencies' chiefs met in Beijing ahead of the seventh World Media Summit.

Antara president director Abdul Hakim met Xinhua president Fu Hua at Xinhua's Beijing headquarters on Thursday 5 November. The two leaders agreed to strengthen cooperation between the agencies, particularly in making optimal and responsible use of artificial intelligence in the media industry, as their partnership approaches its 70th anniversary in 2027.

Hakim said Antara wanted to learn how Xinhua uses artificial intelligence in its news operations, particularly to speed up reporting and extend its international reach. He expressed interest in Xinhua Yudian, an AI-powered tool launched in June 2026, and said Antara hoped to learn from Xinhua's effective practices in using technology to support news gathering and editing.

A partnership dating to 1957

Fu said the two state-run agencies first connected in 1957, after China and Indonesia established diplomatic ties in 1950, and that next year will mark more than 70 years of cooperation. He said Xinhua strongly supports working with Antara and that both leaders had agreed to deepen ties. Antara signed its first agreement with Xinhua in 2015, focused on fake news.

The meeting took place on the sidelines of the seventh World Media Summit, which brought together about 500 delegates from 330 media outlets, research institutions and government organisations. The summit's theme was Media in the Intelligent Age: From Consensus to Action, and the edition coincided with the 95th anniversary of Xinhua's founding.

Fu told the visiting media leaders that Xinhua was ready to work with participating organisations to explore how artificial intelligence could better support news gathering and editing, and to jointly uphold journalistic credibility. Hakim congratulated Xinhua on its anniversary and said Antara appreciated the agency's role in promoting global media exchanges.

AI cooperation across the summit

The Antara meeting was one of several AI-focused encounters at the summit. Xinhua's president also met the senior managing director for international affairs of Japan's Jiji Press, who said better application of AI in news reporting was a common challenge and a key topic at the summit. On the same day, Xinhua signed cooperation documents with the Gabon News Agency and the Lesotho News Agency, agreeing to deepen cooperation in news information exchange and personnel exchanges.

Malaysia's Bernama news agency also discussed a possible AI partnership with Xinhua during the summit, with Bernama's chairman proposing a dedicated cooperation framework covering joint training, sharing operational experience and monitoring global technology developments. No signed AI agreement or funding arrangement was announced in the Antara meeting itself, and the agencies have not disclosed specific AI systems to be jointly developed or deployed. What was agreed was a closer working relationship, with Antara looking to Xinhua's newsroom AI experience as a model for its own modernisation.