Newsrooms across the globe are incorporating different AI elements into their workflow. The motivation stems from multiple factors like the financial struggle of newsrooms, fear of losing the competitive edge and the desire to make their organisation more efficient. 

Inclusion of AI in the newsroom has by no means been a recent phenomenon. Philippines’s Rappler and South Africa’s Daily Maverick were some of the first newsrooms to use AI to generate summaries. Content creation with AI remains the third most used feature of AI in newsrooms, according to the “Journalism, media, and technology trends and predictions 2024” report by the Reuters Institute.

Source: “Journalism, media, and technology trends and predictions 2024” report by the Reuters Institute

Source: “Journalism, media, and technology trends and predictions 2024” report by the Reuters Institute

LSE’s JournalismAI report found that news organisations used AI for three broad things – “news gathering, production and distribution.” Jakub Górnicki, co-founder of Outriders, echoes the same usage of AI within his newsroom. “We use [AI] to support our podcast production. The goal to use [AI] is to speed up the production process at all levels,” he told The Fix.

But he also recognises the ample opportunity that AI could bring. He says, “if I take an interview in English, in two days I could turn it into Czech with the voice of the interviewee and interviewer intact. This is really exciting as it opens up doors to not only experts but also to a wider audience.”

Here are some examples of newsrooms that have managed to expand their audience by giving them a better experience using AI tools.

1. Audience expansion with AI

Finnish public broadcaster Yle realised an opportunity to cater to the thousands of Ukrainians in Finland that were displaced due to Russia’s aggression. They wanted to offer their news in Ukrainian but found few Finnish journalists capable of writing original articles in the target language. This is where Yle decided to bring AI to translate their articles into Ukrainian under the supervision of bilingual journalists. 

Apart from translating, many news organisations have used AI to revamp their existing content into a different format to suit audiences’ needs. POLITICO started using AI to turn their existing newsletters (Brussels Playbook and London Playbook) into podcasts. They were able to do this using WP Engine and AWS’s Amazon Polly plugin.

Norway’s biggest newspaper, Aftenposten, started experimenting with AI-read text and found its audience on par with the human-made podcast. Surprisingly, their AI-read articles had a younger demographic than the human-made podcast. Many organisations, like the BBC and Washington Post, are also putting more effort into producing AI-generated audio articles.

2. Content personalisation with AI

The above-mentioned Finnish Yle has also experimented to make reader’s news consumption more personalised using AI. They created Voitto, a tool that not only produces 100+ articles a week but also acts as a news assistant. On Yle’s  NewsWatch app, Voitto recommends users interesting and personalised news content based on their interests and reading history. It can also be on the user’s lock screen and provide alerts.

3. Better user experience with AI

Last month, Financial Times launched their first AI feature that would allow select FT Professional subscribers to get answers based on FT’s last 20 years of FT content. The reader’s questions will be based on the trusted content found on FT’s own content base. Similarly, users will be able to ask questions on ChatGPT and get answers from the content of French Le Monde and Spanish Prisa Media thanks to the publishers’ partnership with OpenAI. 

Another way readers can get a better experience is by allowing them to interact with the information. German Stuttgarter Zeitung created CrimeMap that shows the where and when of every crime committed in Stuttgart. This gives the audience an added experience that makes them want to spend more time with the journalistic piece. 

There are limitless opportunities media organisations can create with AI. Górnicki says, “Everyone thinks about using AI for generic stuff. Eliminating the mundane parts or speeding up long processes. But we are aiming to go the exact opposite way. We thought, let’s look at different ways we can be uber creative with AI.”

  • GenAI in Journalism is one of the themes in Górnicki and Anna Górnicka’s Mixer. Their festival that starts today aims to spearhead the discussion on using AI, art, humour and more to better the journalistic product.

Source of the cover photo:Markus Winkler via Unsplash