Freeing up newsroom time: How Amedia’s AI sandbox will allow reporters to do more
Summary
TLDRThe Innovate Local webinar featured Marcus Rasanen, Director of News at Norwegian Local Media Group A-pressen, discussing the launch of their AI Sandbox for journalists. The tool aims to streamline local newsroom tasks and enhance journalistic efficiency without compromising trust and quality. Rasanen highlighted the importance of using AI responsibly and the potential for journalists to guide product development through their use of the sandbox. The webinar also touched on the challenges of integrating AI into journalism and the need for transparency with readers regarding AI involvement in news creation.
Takeaways
- 🌟 The webinar is part of the 'Innovate Local' program, a global forum for local media professionals to exchange ideas and solutions.
- 📚 The program is designed for news media companies operating within their own geographical communities, focusing on local journalism's unique opportunities and challenges.
- 🤖 Marcus Rasanen, Director of News at Norwegian Local Media Group, discussed the launch of an AI sandbox for journalists, aiming to save time in local newsrooms.
- 🚀 The AI sandbox is a tool that leverages AI to assist journalists in their work, with the goal of enhancing storytelling and local news coverage.
- 🔐 The sandbox prioritizes trust and responsible use of AI, with guidelines to ensure AI is used ethically and does not compromise journalistic integrity.
- 💡 Marcus demonstrated the sandbox's capabilities in a live demo, showing how it can help journalists quickly summarize documents and generate article ideas.
- 📈 The sandbox collects data on journalists' usage patterns to inform future product development and tailor AI tools to better fit the needs of local newsrooms.
- 🛠️ The AI sandbox is a living tool, constantly evolving with input from journalists and developers to improve its functionality.
- 📝 There is an emphasis on transparency with readers, suggesting that journalists should disclose when AI tools have been used in creating content.
- 🌐 The 'Innovate Local' program is accessible on-demand, with webinars and resources available for local media professionals worldwide.
Q & A
What is the purpose of the 'Innovate Local' webinar series?
-The 'Innovate Local' webinar series is the first global forum for local media, designed to create a space where media professionals can exchange actionable and scalable ideas with a focus on opportunities and problems particular to the business of local journalism.
Who are the hosts of the 'Innovate Local' webinar?
-Cecilia Campbell H, the program editor, and Nicholas Yason H, the program director, are the hosts of the 'Innovate Local' webinar.
How often do the 'Innovate Local' webinars take place?
-The 'Innovate Local' webinars take place twice a month, every other Wednesday at 3:00 European time.
What type of topics are covered in the 'Innovate Local' webinars?
-The webinars cover a variety of editorial and business topics that are particularly relevant to local media.
Who is Marcus Rasanen and what is his role in the webinar?
-Marcus Rasanen is the Director of News at Norwegian Local Media Group A/S Media, and he represents one of the founding member companies of 'Innovate Local'. He discusses the AI sandbox launched for journalists and what they hope to achieve with it.
What is the main goal of the AI sandbox launched by A/S Media?
-The main goal of the AI sandbox is to help local journalists save time and improve efficiency in their work by utilizing AI tools, while ensuring data security and maintaining the trust of their readers.
How does the AI sandbox interface work?
-The AI sandbox interface allows journalists to interact with AI tools in a controlled environment. It logs their use to gather data for product improvements and offers functionalities like summarizing articles, generating headlines, and converting text to audio.
What are some of the guidelines established by A/S Media for using AI in journalism?
-Some guidelines include not using photorealistic AI-generated images to illustrate articles, not putting sensitive information into third-party services, and being transparent with readers about the use of AI tools in creating content.
How does A/S Media plan to use the data collected from the AI sandbox?
-A/S Media plans to use the data collected from the AI sandbox to understand the usage patterns and business needs of their journalists. This knowledge will guide the development of their AI tools and influence product development within the company.
What is the 'Editorial AI Hub' and what is its purpose?
-The 'Editorial AI Hub' is an initiative by A/S Media that connects newsrooms, journalists, development resources, and the AI team. Its purpose is to explore innovative ways to use AI tools and to guide the development of AI applications within the organization.
How can other local media companies benefit from the AI sandbox?
-Other local media companies can benefit from the AI sandbox by implementing a similar controlled environment for their journalists to use AI tools efficiently and safely. This can lead to increased productivity, cost-efficiency, and the ability to experiment with various AI functionalities.
Outlines
🌟 Introduction to Innovate Local Webinar
The video script opens with Cecilia Campbell H warmly welcoming participants to the third Innovate Local webinar, highlighting the international presence with attendees from 20-30 countries. Cecilia introduces herself as the program editor and her colleague Nicholas Yason H, the program director. They express excitement about their partnership with WAN-IFRA to deliver the program aimed at local media professionals worldwide. The purpose of Innovate Local is to foster a global forum for exchanging ideas within the local media industry, focusing on unique opportunities and challenges. The program is designed for news media companies operating within their geographical communities and features two case webinars per month. Today's focus is on the AI sandbox launched by Norwegian Local Media Group, with Marcus Rasanen, the director of news, discussing its potential impact on journalists.
🛠️ Utilizing AI Sandbox for Local Journalism
Marcus Rasanen shares his perspective on the capabilities of AI in local journalism, suggesting that with minimal development work, significant advancements can be achieved using existing tools. He provides a background of his experience and introduces A-Media, a large network of newspapers in Norway with over a thousand journalists and a strong focus on subscription-based revenue. Marcus emphasizes the importance of local newsrooms and the need for AI to support, not replace, the human element of journalism. He also addresses the global challenges faced by the media industry, such as rising costs and inflation, and outlines the AI sandbox's role in helping journalists work more efficiently with fewer resources while maintaining reader trust.
🤖 Trust and AI in Media: Balancing Act
The script delves into the challenges of trust in the media industry when integrating AI technologies. Marcus discusses the potential for AI to compromise trust if not used responsibly, citing examples of misuse by local newspapers in Norway. He outlines the guidelines established by A-Media to ensure AI is used in an innovative yet trustworthy manner, emphasizing the importance of not using AI to generate misleading images or content. Marcus also highlights the need to protect content from being used to train large language models without control or consent, underscoring the importance of maintaining trust and editorial integrity.
📈 AI Sandbox Interface and Functionality
Marcus demonstrates the AI sandbox interface, explaining its dual purpose of controlling content input and leveraging the collective usage data of journalists to guide product development. The sandbox is designed to be a living tool that evolves based on the needs and feedback of journalists. It currently includes features like summarizing articles, generating headlines, and converting text to audio. Marcus showcases a live demo, using the sandbox to quickly create a news article summary and suggesting potential sources for an interview, highlighting the efficiency gains possible with AI assistance.
📝 Enhancing Journalism with AI Tools
The script continues with Marcus discussing the potential of AI to enhance journalistic tasks, such as summarizing lengthy documents and generating headlines. He emphasizes the importance of precise prompts to achieve accurate results and mentions the creation of an editorial AI Hub to connect newsrooms with development resources. The Hub aims to foster innovation and guide product development based on journalists' experiences with AI tools. Marcus also outlines the potential future features for the AI sandbox, such as a brainstormer and auto writer, designed to further streamline journalistic work.
🔒 Ensuring Data Security and Flexibility with AI Sandbox
Marcus highlights the benefits of the AI sandbox in terms of data security, cost-efficiency, and flexibility. He explains that the sandbox allows A-Media to control which AI tools are used and how they are integrated into the journalistic workflow. The sandbox also provides insights into journalists' usage patterns, which can inform product development. Marcus encourages journalists to use the sandbox without fear, while also emphasizing the importance of fact-checking and ethical considerations when using AI-generated content.
🗣️ Communicating AI Use to Readers
The script addresses the question of transparency with readers regarding the use of AI in journalism. Marcus states that while it is up to each editor to decide how to communicate this, A-Media recommends being explicit about the use of AI tools in articles. This aligns with the company's guidelines, which stress the importance of maintaining trust with readers. Marcus also shares that all editors and journalists have access to the AI sandbox, and while there is no requirement to use it, there is an encouragement to explore its potential.
📅 Upcoming Innovate Local Webinar
Cecilia Campbell H concludes the webinar by thanking Marcus for his presentation and live demo, and she provides information about the next Innovate Local webinar, which will feature a case from Tamedia in Switzerland. The topic will focus on audience development and how Tamedia has successfully implemented hyper-local newsletters for small communities. The webinar aims to inspire and provide actionable insights for local media professionals, and Cecilia encourages participants to share the information within their organizations.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Innovate Local
💡AI Sandbox
💡Local Media Professionals
💡Actionable Ideas
💡Opportunities and Problems
💡Media Industry
💡A-Media
💡Subscription Model
💡Digitalization
💡Fact-Checking
Highlights
Introduction of the third regular Innovate Local webinar with a global audience.
Cecilia Campbell H and Nicholas Yason H, the program editor and director, respectively, discuss the Innovate Local program's aim to connect local media professionals worldwide.
Innovate Local is the first global forum dedicated to local media, focusing on opportunities and problems unique to local journalism.
The program is designed for anyone working in a news media company operating within a specific geographical community.
Two case webinars are delivered monthly, featuring one publisher case at a time, addressing a defined problem or opportunity.
Webinars are held every other Wednesday at 3:00 European time and cover editorial and business topics relevant to local media.
Marcus Rasanen, Director of News at Norwegian Local Media Group, discusses the new AI Sandbox launched for journalists.
AI Sandbox aims to free up time in local newsrooms and maintain the human element in storytelling.
AI is positioned as an opportunity to support local newsrooms, not replace the personal touch in journalism.
AI Sandbox is designed to help journalists like Oanes extract more value from interactions with local individuals.
Trust is highlighted as a critical component in the global news industry, especially with the introduction of AI.
AI Sandbox includes guidelines to ensure responsible use of AI in journalism.
Live demo of the AI Sandbox interface and its functionalities for journalists.
Examples of using AI Sandbox to summarize articles and generate headlines, showcasing increased efficiency.
AI Sandbox is a living tool that adapts and evolves based on the use cases and needs of journalists.
The AI Sandbox project aims to incorporate AI tools into the workflow of every journalist in a controlled and safe manner.
AI Hub connects newsrooms with development resources and AI teams to innovate and influence product development.
Feedback from journalists is used to guide the development of new features for the AI Sandbox.
The webinar concludes with a Q&A session addressing questions about the AI Sandbox's functionality and future plans.
Transcripts
all right let's get this show on the
road so hello and a very warm welcome to
our third regular innovate local webinar
it's fantastic to have people joining us
from over um 20 30 countries across all
continents uh and I do hope you'll find
today's case valuable and inspiring um
my name is Cecilia Campbell H and I'm
the innovate local program editor and
with me I have program director Nicholas
yason H and the two of us took the idea
of innovate local to WAN ifra uh and
we're very happy to be partnering with
them to deliver the program bringing
together local media professionals
across the world um Nicholas and I have
both worked in the media industry
internationally uh but we're now back in
our country of origin which is Sweden
Nicholas lives in Stockholm I live in
malma in the South and today we're
really happy to be joined by Marcus
rasanen who um is director of news at
Norwegian local media group or media
we're extra happy to have Marcus here as
he represents one of our founding member
companies so thank you for your support
Marcus it's much
appreciated Marcus is going to talk
about yeah good to see you Marcus is
going to talk about uh the brand new AI
sandbox they launched to their thousand
thousand journalists last week and what
they're H hoping to achieve with that if
you have any questions during the
webinar please put them in the Q&A
section at the bottom of the zoom
interface and then we'll have a Q&A uh
uh session at the end of the
presentation before I hand over to
Marcus let me just say a few words about
this
program so innovate local is the first
global forum for local media the idea is
to create a space where media
professionals can exchange actionable
and scalable ideas with a focus on
opportunities and problems that are
particular uh to the business of local
journalism um the program is aimed at
anyone working in news media company
which operates in its own geographical
community so until now there's been no
International Forum with a focus on the
particular problems and opportunities of
local media so uh yes newsrooms and
markets defer from region to region from
country to Country so I think that's why
there's not been anything till now but
we've see is that the needs of local me
people and local businesses have more in
common than not across different
countries so that's our starting point
there's no Silver Bullet but there is
lots of ground baking work being done by
Folks at local news Publishers all over
the world so we want to bring you all
together and this program is for you and
by you we're delivering two case
webinars a month presented by one of you
uh each webinar features one publisher
case and focuses on how they worked with
one clearly defined problem or
opportunity so the webinars take place
every other Wednesday at 3:00 European
time uh and they will cover all kinds of
editorial and business topics which are
particularly relevant to local media
some will be more of more interest to
you than others depending on what your
role is at your company so the idea is
that you can tap into this resource when
it suits you and of course all webinars
will be available to watch On Demand
afterwards so we'll publish the webinars
write up of cases and other resources
all on the innovate Local website so
have a look there all right let's get on
to today's case Marcus welcome to
innovate locco thank you so much for
being here today to tell us about how AR
media is hoping to free up time in the
local newsrooms by creating an AI
sandbox as a tool for all your local
journalists I'll let you explain
how all right yeah I'll try thank you
very much for the introduction Cecilia
I'm very very very happy to be talking
to all of you so the most nerve-wracking
moment of any webinar of course is
sharing your screen no amount of AI
sandboxing will will help us do
that uh I think we're good can you
confirm
Cecilia I can conf I can confirm yes
perfect
yeah so um yeah um I'm really thrilled
to be part of uh of this webinar series
because I think it's um it's something
that the international scene for Journal
journalism has lacked as cilia so
eloquently explained um for us um we
wanted to sort of um put the spotlight
on the opportunities that AI represent
and also uh try to make it as relevant
as possible for even smaller Publishers
or Standalone newspapers newsrooms uh
it's my opinion that what we do here uh
you can probably do 80 to 90% of it uh
with little to know development work
just by using available tools today so
that that is the basis of what I'm going
to show you I'm going to talk a bit
about our Challenge and our setup and
our IDE of soling that and I'm also
going to do a live demo uh hopefully
it's going to go as planned but this
things are uh notoriously unpredictable
so let's
see um just a couple of words uh about
myself and my background I'm the
director of news at am media uh I worked
in two local newspapers in Northern
Norway for 11 years I held almost every
role imaginable in those uh those titles
uh and I've also always been interested
in technology and de
development uh and actually at one point
in my life I decided while working in a
newspaper to found a company that um
developed and sold publishing systems to
small newspapers which was ironically
bought by am media before I started
working for am media so that was that
was a fun twist uh since 2023 I've
worked in our Central organization so
not in any newsrooms but um but as um as
part of the central organization
here so yeah uh first of all it's
important for me to um most of you are
probably somewhat familiar with what a
media are but for those who
aren't uh we consist of more than 120
newspapers all over Norway which is
quite a long country as you might have
noticed so basically we have more than a
thousand journalists uh situated all
around the country uh we are more than
700,000 subscribers our uh business
model is primarily uh geared towards
subscriptions wasn't that way before but
we've done a huge am amount of work in
terms of digitalizing our subscriber
base and also we've got more than 2
million daily readers so that's that's
who we are uh if you can see my pointer
now I'm trying to point out where I
started my career in local news media in
a town called
Buddha I noticed a couple of Swedish
names in the chat uh so you probably
heard about the local football team
there Buddha glimp which I'm quite proud
of just needed to get that in there okay
so um our local newspapers and newsrooms
are our core that's the core of a media
that will never change so everything we
do is uh is geared towards solving the
problems that arise locally that's a
really important principle for
us so when we're approaching all these
questions all these uh possibilities all
these challenges that artificial techn
technology and artif artificial
intelligence presents it's very
important for us to remember that we
need to to do it in a way that supports
uh our local news rooms we're not trying
to uh the aim for us is not trying to uh
you know just uh work more effectively
on a news desk providing even more of
the same content uh that uh pretty much
anyone can do generically our goal is to
support um the meeting between humans
our presence in our local societies and
uh and our local identity so that's just
something I wanted to to state before
the
presentation okay so this is a picture I
I like uh very much it's O yanes to the
left here he's a journalist in a small
newspaper that we own in the west of
Norway that's called
Fon his uh on this picture his um
recording a podcast Series where he
interviews a man to the writer called
BNA who's dying he's got a cancer
diagnosis uh B actually died a couple of
weeks ago and olanes has made a quite
touching podcast Series where he
interviews B about his uh perspective
towards life itself I might say um it's
it's a really touching touching series
if any of you speak any Norwegian I
would recommend it but the point about
this picture is I think it's uh you know
it's just uh it's just made his own
podcast studio uh in a cabin and this is
basically what a media is and the AI
technology can never replace this you
can never replace meeting humans uh and
getting them to tell their
stories so that's that's sort of our um
our objective here it's not to replace
this it's to expand upon
this uh as you all know uh we've got the
global challenge going at the moment in
terms of uh Rising costs uh inflation
and in Norway that's quite
brutal uh most media most Publishers and
most
newsrooms uh are going to have to make
to with less people than they did just a
year or two ago because of the global
economy and the
and the things arising the problems
arising from that so that's a problem we
need to solve we need to serve our
readers and our users with less
resources than we did before and they
kind of expect more in return because uh
they measure us against Global uh
entertainment providers or other
providers of um of
content and obviously this uh this is
quite the conundrum so the question we
tried to to answer or start answering
with our AI sandbox is how can we help
oanes here to extract even more from
meeting people like
P so that's one part of the equation
we're trying to solve with the AI
sandbox the other part and perhaps one
of the biggest challenges when we as a
media industry face the opportunities
presented by AI is
trust because I'm of um the opinion that
trust is one of the most valuable things
uh that we have
in um in um the global news industry and
obviously this trust as you can see on
these slides uh might be you can say
challenged by the opportunities that AI
provides this is a small newspaper in
Norway that uh probably have discovered
mid Journey or gencraft or image
generator of sorts and uh started
illustrating their articles uh primarily
using that
I would not Advocate that I don't think
that's um I don't think I don't think
that's the way to sort
of um sort of
uh you know we we need to we need to
never lose sight of the trust Dimension
and if you start doing this I think
there's a danger that uh we just uh more
of the same kind of content stream
that's going to pop out uh pop up in um
more frequent variety that we have seen
lately because of AI possibilities and
also you know generating photo realistic
is images I would not recommend doing
that but some local newspapers in Norway
have tried to do that um I'm not really
sure about the results so this is
definitely not what we're trying to
solve with our a
box uh trust as I mentioned is one of
our primary Commodities and to help our
newspapers uh exploit AI in an
Innovative but responsible way we've
established some guidelines uh for them
that will help their the editors uh
determine how they approach AI basically
these are not strict rules every editor
must determine their own rules but I
think they need some guidance and we
tried to provide that for instance we
don't recommend using photo realistic AI
generated images to illustrate our
articles that's just one one example
obviously we don't Advocate uh putting
sensitive information into third party
services and so forth so the trust
Dimension is important for us to sort of
solve when we're trying to do this and
also if you look around yourself in in
the world today there's a bigger picture
uh as I mentioned we're quite heavily
geared towards subscription Revenue uh
we want to protect our content uh from
uh being used to training
big llms large language
models uh if our content is going to be
used to train llms we want to know how
it's going to be used and we want to
control it so that's uh a principle that
we try to apply when when making our own
AI sandbox and basically we want the
freedom to be able to experiment with
editorial use of AI in a safe
environment which you really can't do if
you just uh publish or feed unpublished
articles into chat gp4
um so that's another part of the problem
we tried to to
answer um in Amia we have actually
explored AI for quite a few years uh
since 2018 we we had our own dedicated
team of AI Specialists that supports all
our lines of business um so it's not
entirely new ground uh but we have
focused our efforts towards other things
than um than sort of the products or the
improvements that uh that meet the
readers and users and our journalists
we've we have trained a lot of language
models that helps us analyze and
understand our editorial content we've
done a lot with personalization
obviously we got a huge amount of data
since we have so many subscribers which
we have good and structured data about
and also we used it for simple tools
like converting audio to text and and
such um one of the big projects which we
want to exploit more the coming years is
how we can use our AI plat platform and
our structured content data um and how
that might be able to power up our uh
publishing system because obviously if
you can integrate uh AI tools directly
uh into the workspaces of our
journalists then that's very interesting
and this sandbox is kind of the first
step towards that but not quite I'll
show you the difference in the demo
okay so that's the background and the
reason why we want to do this um I think
this is where I try to go live uh with
my demo so that's another nerve-wracking
moment just a couple of seconds and I'll
try
to
uh uh
okay sorry I need to hide a couple of
panels here um can you see my screen
Cecilia yes I
can yeah perfect it's good okay so this
is basically the interface of our AI
sandbox when uh every one of our more
than a thousand journalists uh go into
this sandbox they they're met with this
interface and sort of the idea here is
twofold for one we want to control the
content that we put into it we don't
want it to be used or abused and the
second part of it which which is kind of
the coolest thing is um we're using what
we call our journalistic hive mind in am
media as I said we're more than a
thousand journalists situated around the
whole country of Norway and what we do
when when these journalists use this
sandbox is we're logging their use and
we're getting IDs for product
improvements Direct IR ly from the use
cases that they prompt into our models
so just to give you give you an example
if um if a large part of the use is um
making U or if um if someone uses this
to summarize articles then obviously we
can make functionality that does exactly
that which we've done here if uh another
use case is uh writing better headlines
then obviously we can Implement that or
develop that capacity and so we want the
organic use of our journalists to be our
guideline when we develop their
workspace basically and I'll show you a
couple of things which we've already
implemented and this is uh this is a
Sandbox that is a living thing I'm
pretty sure there are developers right
now doing something under the hood there
so I'm I'm hoping this uh beta version
is is cooperating with me so first I
just wanted to give you a C of ideas of
how this would this will help our
journalists in their their um their work
uh for instance a typical task for a
local journalist in Norway is keeping
track of all the these uh municipality
meetings or Council meetings or planning
meetings uh I just went and brought a
report from my hometown of Buddha here
which I found on the web page and I'm
going to do this demo in English
obviously because language is is not a
barrier here so here I've just uploaded
the PDF with uh with information about
the meeting that's going to be held and
obviously you can do simple things like
uh prompting that you're a journalist
and you want a summarized version of
this for instance if you you can't be
bothered reading through the
documents
and obviously the better the prompt as
you probably know the more concise the
output
is so let's see if the sbox corporates
here yeah so here I got a couple of
buildings the city of Buddha has receiv
received an application from nor gra
this is which is a travel traveling
agency for co-financing of marketing for
a direct route between Buddha and
Helsinki and I can read that fer has
decided to do a direct route between
Buddha and Helsinki which is obviously
an interesting story for me to write
about is local journalist
Sima
um so I want to uh speed up the work a
bit and obviously you need the prompts
to be precise which is a large part of
implementing the sandbox now um and
helping our journalists use this eff
efficiently of course we use quite a lot
of time uh
training
so let's see what what we come up with
here okay that's that's fine and also I
can read a quote from the mayor which is
fine which I'm quite sure the AI have
invented because budha does have a
different different mayor now so just
just a a case in point when it comes to
fact
checking what you're going to do but
okay uh
could I want the more Tablo headline I
don't think that's that will cut
it okay I like the last one there
and I don't want the quotes from the
mayor okay so now basically in my
mind uh I've got what I might call a
base for an article not a finished
article it's not fact checked I not
spoken to anyone but with a couple of
minutes of work and prompting I
basically uh I done a lot of generic and
uh frankly quite unnecessary work so
using this you can then expand upon this
you could for
example ask the sandbox which sources
you would
use
and I'm pretty sure you get decent
responses what's interesting for those
of you who are watching this and think
oh this this is cool but I can't do this
with my local newspaper well you kind of
can I don't think it's it's really that
difficult uh basically this uses chat
GPT Force engine and we've just built an
interface for it uh what I would say is
I would not recommend uh feeding uh
information unpublished information
sensitive information into chat GPT
directly I would definitely recommend
putting it in a safe environment which
would not be a huge body of work to get
done but basically by just uh just a
couple of easy prompts I've got the base
for an article and I got a list of quite
good uh sources which I could interview
about this so that's just one example uh
of how you can use this as a journalist
to become a bit more efficient and to to
save a bit of time um I wanted to do
another example just
quickly so yeah uh let's imagine that
I'm a journalist still in my hometown of
Buddha that's uh that just started work
uh
and and my editor has told me that
you're going to do a follow-up story on
this story which um which is about
schools that are going to be to be uh uh
to be close because of economical
reasons basically I don't know anything
about the story beforehand I just
started working today so what do I do
well I can uh save a bit of time by
using the AI sandbox to summarize
this and as always I try to
be as concise as
possible
okay looks quite good quite easy to get
a handle on what this is
about
you and as you can see uh still I just
used basically I've only used the chat
function which is to say most of this
you can do using just the chat functions
from uh large language
models uh and as I said it's probably
not a big development work just to get
that in a safe environment uh we also
got some more advanced uh Advanced
functionality here we have the ability
to uh to to tr to get audio from text
here using different voices this is also
not technology we've developed ourselves
it is a provider that we just uh made
available in the user interface but it's
in the same controlled environment so
that's one option we've got and we
obviously got stuff like uh headline
proposals and and and really quite basic
quite basic functional functionality at
the time being but uh if I go back to my
presentation uh there are some
opportunities that open up when our
journalists start using this these tools
and starts getting familiar with the
opportunities that they provide
wide so we've launched an editorial AI
Hub uh which have a couple of initiative
leads that work in our Central
organization the intention of this AI
Hub is to connect basically our
newsrooms uh the journalists out there
which of which eight are participating
in this Hub project with our development
resources and our AI team and our
editorial development team so basically
uh they will try to be ambassadors they
will try to learn how we can use these
tools in a most Innovative way and we'll
try to let that also influence the way
we product developed so this is how it
works we put something into our AI
router uh which uh obviously
communicates with open AR or Google or
any other third party and we get
output we log the data so we know what
our journalists use this
for we can give feedback towards the
output thanks to our AI team and then
basically over time we can build our own
am media GPT which knows am media's
content which knows uh what constitutes
a good headline and a less good headline
which knows what journalists really mean
when they type different prompts into
the interface so that is sort of um sort
of the
ID which we just started down the rout
of
uh but of course even in a safe
environment even in a sandbox there are
dos and don'ts so what we tell our
journalists in addition to giving the
editors some guidance on establishing
their own guidelines we obviously tell
everyone to use the sandbox don't be
afraid to use it you can't do anything
really wrong as long as you don't I
don't know feed your personal health uh
information or something into the tools
um and we need to get them to start
start asking the question can this
sandbox help me with this so uh that's
probably the biggest uh the biggest uh
body of work it's getting enough people
uh interested in and getting them to
understand the possibilities that these
tools give
you uh obviously you need to fact check
before publishing which by the way goes
for uh not just gen AI
created content but pretty much every
content but it's uh it's even more
important now obviously and also there's
no don't there's a couple of don'ts
which uh you can pretty much um if
you're if you're sensible about it you
can pretty much uh deduce this
yourselves but it's it's nice to be
explicit about
it uh and obviously there's an
opportunities opportunity to give
feedback directly to the sandbox as
well um so if I Tred to summarize why
did we make it well uh it gives us
flexibility in terms of which third
party AI tools we want to use in a safe
environment it ensures data
security uh it's cost efficient and we
have control over the costs we don't
distribute the decisions about which AI
tools I want to buy or plug into our
systems uh into 100 news
rooms and of course we gain knowledge of
our business needs and the potential use
cases through the use patterns we see
also this is a chance for our
journalists to yes as I said guide the
direction of our product development
which I think is maybe the most exciting
thing about all this and it's also a way
to ensure that we spread expertise uh
and um the ability to use AI tools
efficiently as a journalist to us an
editor throughout our
organization
and we have had a couple of workshops
with the AI Hub these are just a couple
of things that we want to implement into
the AI sendbox quite uh quite quickly uh
using uh the feedback that they have
given us so for instance the
brainstormer which is basically a more
efficient way of uh asking for IDs fact
checking obviously is going to be
important Auto writer is something that
we're working on at the moment basically
uh for instance if if a journalists uh
in a local newspaper this happens quite
frequently uh in our
newspapers if someone wanted to do a
story about the weather then they might
check uh the weather forecast and they
start write up writing up a story the
auto writer can do this for you you can
call the meteorologists or something and
get get a quote instead and be more
efficient talk to
people um and obviously different um
different kinds of
functionalities this is just a result of
one workshop and the initial feedback
we've got gotten from journalists and
this is going to expand quite quickly um
at the moment this is a Sandbox which is
a stand loone product it's not
incorporated into our CMS but obviously
uh that is the end goal we want to incor
incorporate this this into the workflow
of every journalist but just to
reiterate it you don't need a host of
developers you don't need a huge Central
organization you don't need to plug this
into your CMS what what you can do is
hire a developer and let them spend 10
or 15 hours to set up this safe
environment for you um the main body of
work um with our a andbox has basically
been done in about a month with one or
two people involved so it's not a lot of
work it's not Out Of Reach for even
really small
Publishers and obviously our our wish
here is to create a set of tools that
helps our journalists become better in
their jobs and enables time uh spent
meeting real people and writing real
stories so that's basically the Crux of
it uh I'm afraid I did the the live demo
a bit early in the presentation but I
think it works um pretty much worked
either way don't you think
Cecilia absolutely that was brilliant
very seamless I have to
say um thank you so much Marcus um I'm
going to let we have we got a question
we need to make sure we have enough time
for questions we have a question from
Saka ludik uh she said during the demo
she said it looks like there's a
limitation of use for your reporters the
interface says something with usage of
tokens she's wondering what this is
about yeah it's basically it's basically
functionality that exists in every large
language model because it it's so
resource demanding but you don't see it
in the interface of chat GPT because so
basically what it means is um in every
context window you have a limited amount
of
memory in the language model so for
instance if I were to chat for two more
hours about the story I chatted
about earlier then I would use up sort
of the the context memory of that
particular um instance but what what we
basically do is refresh the window and
start over again
without the earlier context so it's not
a limit and it's very cost efficient it
doesn't cost us a lot at all so that's
that's just the way the large language
models Works uh chat jpt does this but
you don't see it in the interface so
perhaps we should hide it
that's and and uh I think we saw three
different large language models there um
why have you done that and what is the
learning so far well it's only been a
week
but yeah but obviously the the use cases
are quite extensional already so we have
learned a lot already just during the
first week but but basically the idea is
to we don't want to limit uh the access
to different types of language models or
AI tools we want uh to experiment with
which ones perform the best and which
ones uh are the most intuitive for our
journalists and the early findings is
that chat GPT 4 is by far the most
popular and
better one so far
so G is not not that no and they ran
into trouble didn't they yeah yeah yeah
they did and
[Music]
um a question about fact Checkers yeah
sorry how does check fact Checker
works yeah so basically we have um this
is um this is a system deviced from our
AI team the reason why why large
language models hallucinate is because
they predict uh but they can only
predict uh based on the context that you
give them so basically if you if you
Anchor
Information then you can use llm to fact
check for you I don't remember the
technical term it's a different type of
model but basically you instead of uh
asking the training material of chat GPT
who's the president of the United States
you anchor uh a verified place of
information for instance Wikipedia if
you trust that or another encyclopedia
and then you go there
directly that's one way of doing it
right uh I have I have a quite a
different question but I'm quite
interested in knowing are you
communicating this to and do you think
it's necessary because it's not actually
you're not autop publishing anything but
are you communicating to your readers
about the fact that AI is involved in
your journalism now somehow and how do
you do that absolutely so this is um
basically the way am media works is this
is every editor's uh own privilege to to
to decide how you want to do this but we
we've established some guidelines as I
showed you and in those guidelines we
for instance recommend uh that whenever
you've used AI tools you should probably
explicitly tell the reader about it so
for instance this tic this article
summary has been produced with the help
of AI tools or right a text yes that
sort yeah absolutely but definitely it's
it's that's a really important part of
the the trust Dimension I think to be
open where
and um we have a question from um Dean
uh every editor and journalist has exper
access to this right there is no limit
who can use it no that's
right
[Music]
um
the kind of the problem you know every
editor and has access to chat GPT as
well and we don't want them to use them
use it without
thinking yeah but they don't have to use
it yeah do they have to use it um
interesting question I know where very
good question uh I know shipstad for
instance some of their newspapers have
implemented this it as a demand that you
have to use AI tools just to get used we
have not done that yet we won't to
inspire people to use
it but I'm I don't think you can
really you you you you do not have the
choice of not U trying out some of these
possibilities as a journalist I don't
think you can I just don't think it's
viable no I think you're right in this
day and age
nichas you have any
questions yeah so you had it out for
some for a short time it's quite kind of
new right so so what are the First
Reactions like personal that you can
tell
us finally it's the most common reaction
um and obviously that reaction comes
from those people who have probably
tested a lot of AI tools outside of our
digital ecosystem before um but but also
we oh there have been so many questions
there there have been questions about
guidelines um there have been
journalists contacting us wondering
whether you should use this for
illustrating historical podcast pieces
uh there's been a lot of questions um
and in terms of use patterns U basically
the most the most used use case so far
seems to be chatting with your headlines
to try to improve them which I think is
quite clever from our yeah our editors
yeah
absolutely all right we're uh we're
running it's very popular we probably
could talk for a long time about this
but uh we'll we'll come back to this um
topic again I'm sure um I'm going to
share my screen
again
um so um this as I said this webinar
will be available to watch On Demand uh
on the innovate Local website uh and
we'll send out an email with that link
um there will also be a write up and
we'll have some other resources
available um if you have question any
questions about innovate local uh
suggestions for cases or maybe you have
a case that you would like to present um
please get in touch with me on nichlas
um and our next webinar is in two weeks
on March 20th and we'll feature an
exciting case from tamedia in
Switzerland the topic will be audience
development and we'll hear how Tamia
offers hyper local newsletters to
communities with as few as 5,000
inhabitants and through smart data
collection um the time to produce these
newsletters have gone from several hours
to 20 minutes uh and the newsletters now
have a reach of 20 to 40% after just one
year of of
operation and the job is to drive
Tamia's top of subscription funnel so um
now I realize audience development might
not be your main topic of interest but
it will be no doubt be very interesting
to one of or two of your colleagues so
we really recommend that you spread the
word in your companies about innovate
local um to people to come and register
and then to get on that all important um
mailing list to get the link to the
webinar every Monday and you can choose
whether you join or not so let everybody
know uh that concludes uh this innovate
local webinar thank you so much Marcus
for sharing your sites and doing a live
demo that was very brave um and thank
you for supporting our program we really
appreciate it uh and thanks everyone for
joining us today we hope to see you here
again soon for another Wednesday webinar
goodbye goodbye thank you Marcus goodbye
everyone
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