The inquiry will focus on what the overall aims of delivering media literacy should be in the UK, as well as what ‘good’ media literacy would look like and positive examples of media literacy programmes from other countries.

Other areas of investigation include the performance of current media literacy initiatives, and the role of government, regulators, industry and civil society in supporting the issue.

Good practice will also be investigated, as well as how approaches to media literacy need to develop to keep pace with technological change.

The roles of regulators, legislation and education in improving media literacy will also be examined, the committee said.

The committee is inviting written evidence to be submitted by Friday 11th April. 

Ofcom research has previously indicated that only 45% of UK adults are confident they can judge whether sources of information are truthful, and 30% are confident they can identify whether content is AI generated.

Baroness Keeley, chair of the committee, said: “As online AI tools become increasingly powerful it is vital that the public can understand what they are seeing and why. The fact that less than a third of adults are confident they can identify AI-generated content is deeply concerning.

“We want to understand how the UK can get better at media literacy. We are falling behind internationally, so it is important to examine what we can do to improve media literacy education both in schools and into adulthood.”