During its World News Media Congress in Copenhagen, WAN-IFRA published its fifth report focused on the topic of Artificial Intelligence. The report, ‘AI in Action’, features 10 practical, global use cases of how news publishers are working with Artificial Intelligence, particularly generative AI.
Often lost in the constant deluge of AI announcements is the actual experimentation, implementation and innovation that news publishers are doing with the help of the technology.
The report’s case studies delve into examples of how these respective publishers have identified a specific need or area where AI can help. Many cases detail the learning curve of working with generative AI – the challenges and opportunities.
“Some of the randomness of the cases featured here is for good reason: to show how publishers of all sizes and at different stages of their AI journeys are finding ways to benefit from using AI – right now,” said Dean Roper, director of insights.
Survey: 123 executives share their long-term thoughts on AI
To get a longer-term perspective, the report opens with the results of a recent short survey in which top news executives were asked to share their insights on how they see AI affecting their organisations within the next few years. Some of the findings from the survey, include:
- 52% of news executives said they are optimistic or very optimistic about how AI will affect their news organisations within the next 3-5 years, while 37% said they were concerned or very concerned.
- Only 13% of news executives said they are “well prepared” to take advantage of AI’s potential. 45% said they were “somewhat prepared,” 33% “poorly prepared” and 7% “not prepared at all.”
- 69% of news executives said they prefer to negotiate with AI providers in terms of licensing content, etc., while 12% prefer to “take legal action” and 19% “wait and see.”
User case highlights
Tamedia: With the help of AI, the Swiss publisher ramped up its production of automated, hyperlocal newsletters while reducing the production time of the newsletters by 80%, increasing open rates and CTRs.
La Nación: The Argentinian publisher designed Genie, an internal tool built with AI/NLP (Natural Language Processing) to track the gender gap in the company’s reportage through metrics on female, male, and non-binary sources and quotes.
The Daily Maverick: The South African-based publisher went about experimenting with ChatGPT to help create summary articles and summary cards. And with that came the realisation of the ups and downs of working with the technology but ultimately improving reader engagement.
Relevo: The Spanish sports news website wanted to make the most of its mobile / TikTok-like homepage and measure success by introducing an ad-hoc metric and AI-supported software coding. The project helped to improve homepage engagement by a third in just two months, and proved that non-coders on the team were able to effectively use generative AI.
IDN Media: From surveying more than 1,000 mostly college-educated Gen Zs, Indonesia’s IDN Media knew they needed to create more social media-like bite-size content to connect with this demographic.. The brand created “Intinya Sih” (“Here’s the Point”). These are article summaries that take less than 20 seconds to glean.
Schibsted: The Nordic media group showcases a number of examples of incorporating AI. This includes a transcription tool called JOJO for VG in Norway that has helped to save nearly 20,000 hours of journalists’ time. Another example is how Schibsted’s big brands are using AI voices from some of their well-known audio commentators.
Die Zeit: The iconic German publisher has crafted an innovative question-answering application – Ask Zeit Online – for subscribers, drawing insights from thousands of the brand’s published digital and print articles. The company launched the app in January 2024.
Hindustan Times Digital Streams: The Indian news brand launched its AI efforts in February 2023 with a 15-person team with the stated goal of becoming an AI Newsroom.
Expressen: The Swedish Bonnier-owned news brand has developed a number of ChatGPT-based tools to support journalists in their daily work: suggestions about interviewees, text shorteners for print, AI assistants, bullet point summaries, as well as an AI interface embedded in its CMS to help with push notifications, subheads, headlines, and more.
Ouest-France: Quietly, the French regional publisher has become perhaps one of the most advanced French media groups in terms of strategy and initiatives around generative AI. This is a short but simple explanation of how a regional publisher is approaching its strategic framework with AI.
WAN-IFRA is constantly monitoring and reporting on the latest developments of AI. WAN-IFRA members can easily follow those by visiting our Media Watch curated site. WAN-IFRA will also produce a report based on the AI key takeaways from our World News Media Congress (planned for late June), as well as a deeper report on two publishers’ overall strategies toward the end of the year.
Download and Inquiries
WAN-IFRA members can download the report for free. Non-members and trade press can email WAN-IFRA customer service (cic@wan-ifra.org) about accessing the report.
