Felicitas Carrique: News Product Management in the Age of AI
Dec 22, 2023
auto_awesome
Felicitas Carrique, Executive Director of the News Product Alliance, discusses AI product strategy and ethical use in newsrooms. They explore evaluating AI tools, the role of AI in product management, and the benefits of joining the News Product Alliance Slack channel.
AI can play a crucial role in product strategy by leveraging data to understand audience needs and providing valuable insights for decision-making, but organizations must exercise caution in areas like content creation to maintain journalistic integrity.
Building an effective AI product strategy requires aligning it with the organization's overall business strategy and audience needs, evaluating AI tools based on customization, time to production, cost, and underlying technology, and investing in internal capabilities and resources to adapt to the rapidly evolving AI technology.
Deep dives
The Power of AI in Product Strategy
AI can play a crucial role in product strategy by leveraging data to understand audience needs, improving the product based on feedback, and identifying patterns in user behavior. It can also aid in audience research and provide valuable insights for decision-making. However, organizations must exercise caution when using AI in areas like content creation, ensuring that it aligns with their value proposition and does not compromise journalistic integrity. AI tools should be evaluated based on factors like customization, time to production, cost, and data privacy. The role of the product manager becomes even more important in overseeing AI-based products and monitoring their accuracy, performance, and alignment with audience needs and organizational goals.
The Challenges of Incorporating AI in Product Strategy
Building an effective AI product strategy requires organizations to align it with their overall business strategy and audience needs. This involves understanding the value proposition, identifying the problems the organization solves, and setting realistic goals. Evaluating AI tools and vendors involves considering factors like customization, time to production, cost, and the underlying technology and models used. The rapidly evolving nature of AI technology presents challenges in keeping up, but organizations can focus on building internal capabilities and resources, investing in data pipelines, and training or hiring AI strategists or team members. Developing a capacity for experimentation and iteration allows organizations to adapt and make better use of AI technology.
The Role of AI in Newsroom Product Development
AI can support newsroom product development by assisting in user research, data analysis, and content creation. Tools leveraging natural language processing can help extract insights from user interviews and identify patterns in data. However, caution must be exercised in incorporating AI-based content creation tools to maintain journalistic integrity and audience trust. Newsroom organizations should prioritize data collection and analysis, ensuring that they have accurate and relevant data to generate valuable insights. Leveraging AI in product management requires considering the specific needs of the organization and the audience, and making decisions based on the value it adds to the product and the overall business strategy.
Evaluating AI Tools and Vendors
When evaluating AI tools and vendors, organizations should consider factors like customization, time to production, cost, and open source versus proprietary options. Understanding the underlying technology and models used, such as GPT models, is crucial in assessing the quality and value that the tool or vendor provides. Building clarity on the organization's strategy and value proposition helps in making informed decisions about which AI tools to adopt and how they align with audience needs and business goals. Exploring AI capabilities and experimenting with AI tools can be valuable, but organizations should also be aware of potential risks like unintended biases, data privacy, and the need for ongoing oversight and evaluation.
Felicitas Carrique, Executive Director of the News Product Alliance joins Nikita Roy to discuss the key components of building a successful AI product strategy in newsrooms. She also discusses the role of AI in the product development process and offers insights on evaluating AI tools and vendors.
As the Executive Director of the News Product Alliance she has built a community of support and practice for news product professionals and product thinkers working together toward a more sustainable and ethical future for the news industry.
The Future Today Institute's 2023 Tech Trends Report spotflighted her as "One to Watch" in the news industry for her leadership.
In her prior role as the Innovation Director at Sembra Media, Felicitas worked extensively with news organizations across Latin America, Spain, and the United States, promoting innovation and spearheading product design and systems development within the organization.
Felicitas is also a Professor and guest lecturer in several universities, including Universidad Católica Argentina, where she co-created the first news product class in Latin America.
✉️ Stay updated with Newsroom Robots newsletter! Sign up here.
