Newsroom Robots

Join Alessandro Alviani, Lead for Generative AI, and Fabian Heckenberger, Managing Editor for AI at Süddeutsche Zeitung, as they explore AI's transformative role in journalism. They discuss developing AI tools tailored for audiences, building trust through transparency, and fostering AI literacy among journalists. The conversation also dives into creating smart features like chatbots for political engagement and real-time risk management for AI tools, ensuring editorial integrity while enhancing reader experience.

Francesco Marconi, co-founder of AppliedXL and former R&D lead at The Wall Street Journal, joins Scott Austin, head of business development at Symbolic.ai and an ex-Wall Street Journal reporter. They discuss how 2025 marked a pivotal shift in AI's role in journalism, evolving from a mere tool to a foundational system. The conversation explores the transition from search to direct answers, the hidden work behind reporting, and the necessity for news organizations to become data-centric. AI's impact on workflows and the importance of human judgment remain crucial in this evolving landscape.

The Philadelphia Inquirer never had an AI engineer on staff until the Lenfest AI Collaborative & Fellowship program changed that.The collaborative is a $5 million partnership between the Lenfest Institute, OpenAI, and Microsoft that placed 10 AI fellows in American newsrooms for two years. These engineers work within the organizations, building tools that solve real newsroom problems.This week on Newsroom Robots, host Nikita Roy sits down with Jim Friedlich, CEO and Executive Director of the Lenfest Institute, David Chivers, lead advisor to the Lenfest AI Collaborative and Matt Boggie, CTO of The Philadelphia Inquirer, to walk through how the program works and what the Inquirer has built as a result.The Inquirer came to the collaborative with an idea to build a full-archive search tool that would let reporters query decades of journalism. They expected it to take 24 months. Within two weeks of a Microsoft hackathon, they had working code. The tool, now called Dewey, searches everything the Inquirer has published since 1978.This episode covers:03:02 — How the Lenfest AI Collaborative got started05:34 — Can newsrooms trust big tech partners?08:33 — How the fellowship works day to day14:52– Inside the Microsoft hackathon that built Dewey in two weeks21:37 — Training journalists to understand LLM limitations24:07 — How AI literacy has changed newsroom culture29:45 – How small newsrooms can get started with AI35:14 — AI answers, search decline, and the future of audience traffic38:15 — Rethinking journalism’s role in an AI-mediated world41:23 — Closing reflections and personal AI useThis episode of Newsroom Robots is supported by the Lenfest Institute for Journalism. Sign up for the Newsroom Robots newsletter for episode summaries and insights from host Nikita Roy. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Tav Klitgaard, co-founder and CEO of Zetland, an innovative audio-first newsroom in Denmark, shares fascinating insights about GoodTape, an AI transcription tool that started as a solution for journalists. Tav explains how GoodTape transformed from an internal experiment into a profitable product, overcoming challenges in transcription quality through a blend of technology and journalistic standards. He also discusses the lessons learned in AI adoption and the importance of maintaining human connection in journalism, even amidst rising AI tools.

How do you redesign a newsroom’s entire workflow when AI is no longer a single tool, but a collection of agents, voice interfaces, and ambient intelligence changing how journalism gets produced?This week on Newsroom Robots, host Nikita Roy is joined by Markus Franz, Chief Technology Officer at Ippen Digital, one of Germany’s largest digital media networks with more than 80 online news and media portals. This episode was recorded live at the Digital Growth Summit in Stuttgart, where Markus shared how his team is building some of the most forward-looking AI experiments in European media.Markus leads Ippen Digital’s Incubator Lab, an innovation unit focused on reimagining how publishing and AI-driven experiences will evolve. With 16 years inside the company, Markus has been central to Ippen’s digital transformation and now leads efforts around multi-agent architectures and building adaptive workflows for the newsroom.In this conversation, Markus breaks down how his lab is experimenting with multi-agent “virtual teams,” voice-first newsroom interfaces, multimodal content production and an ambient AI-powered newsroom where intelligent systems support journalists in real time. He shares what his team has learned from early prototypes, why the biggest challenges are cultural rather than technical, and how news organizations should think about guardrails, platform dependency, and the rise of self-evolving models.This episode covers:02:22 – Why Ippen Digital built an Incubator Lab and how it’s structured as a future-focused R&D unit04:49 – What multi-agent systems look like inside a newsroom9:42 – The case for voice as the next major interface for both journalists and audiences14:41 – The shift from human-in-the-loop to human-on-the-loop workflows17:40 – Guardrails for agent systems: grounding, bounding, editorial policies19:33 – The vision for an ambient newsroom powered by AI companions and real-time intelligence27:31 – Why vendor lock-in and self-evolving LLMs pose new strategic risks30:08 – Multimodal personalization and rethinking how news is experienced34:27 – Why most AI pilots fail and what experimentation looks like in practice49:19 – Markus’s personal AI stack and how he uses these tools day-to-daySign up for the Newsroom Robots newsletter for episode summaries and insights from host Nikita Roy. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Olle Zacharison, Head of News AI at BBC News and former Head of AI at Swedish Radio, shares insights on integrating AI in a global newsroom. He unveils the BBC's four-part AI strategy, focusing on productivity boosts and content reformatting. Olle discusses the challenges of applying AI across 42 languages and the importance of collaboration among teams. He highlights innovative use of synthetic voices for personalized news and stresses maintaining editorial integrity in an AI-driven landscape. Olle also emphasizes the BBC's role as a trusted source amidst misinformation.

Vilas Dhar, President of the Patrick J. McGovern Foundation, champions ethical AI for public good. He discusses the essential human element in journalism amidst AI advancements and presents his LISA framework for audience-centered AI design. Dhar raises critical questions about newsroom identity in the AI age, the importance of transparency, and balancing innovation with sustainability. He also emphasizes that human creativity and moral judgment are irreplaceable, urging newsrooms to embrace technology while prioritizing ethical practices.

Ludwig Siegele, Senior Editor for AI Initiatives at The Economist, dives into how the historic publication is navigating the AI revolution. He shares insights on launching the innovative AI Lab, designed to experiment with tools like AI-powered translation and TikTok video dubbing. Ludwig discusses overcoming initial fears in the newsroom and the challenges of integrating new technologies. He also predicts how automation could redefine journalism roles, emphasizing the need for quality control and reporting in an AI-driven future.

In Estonia, Delfi Meedia has built one of the strongest foundations for AI in journalism. With one of the highest digital subscription rates in the world, Delfi has moved beyond the buzz around AI to put it into everyday practice, supporting both its journalism and business.In this episode, host Nikita Roy is joined by Ivar Krustok, Chief AI & Innovation Officer at Delfi Meedia. Ivar breaks down how a small-market publisher is shipping AI that actually helps journalists: from live cross-language translation and newsroom bots to an in-house “company ChatGPT” toolkit wired into 25 years of archives and public records.Key topics include:•Delfi’s three-bucket AI strategy: everyday newsroom tools, experimental long-term projects, and company-wide literacy.•Why Delfi built its own “company ChatGPT” toolkit to search 25 years of archives.•How bots and agents are transforming dashboards into conversational tools for subscriptions, ads, and editorial performance.•Lessons from AI experiments, from court-case monitoring that surfaces hidden stories to audience-facing image generators.•The ongoing challenge of scaling AI literacy across hundreds of staff while keeping adoption practical and trust-centered.Sign up for the Newsroom Robots newsletter for episode summaries and insights from host Nikita Roy. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

As a new academic year begins, journalism schools face a defining challenge: how to prepare students for a profession being reshaped by AI.At Stanford University, Djordje Padejski is leading the way. A veteran investigative journalist and now associate director of the John S. Knight Journalism Fellowships at Stanford, he created one of the earliest AI-focused journalism courses at Arizona State University before bringing it to Stanford last year. His classroom is less lecture hall and more lab, where students test AI tools and also learn to examine them.On Newsroom Robots, Djordje shared how he structures his course and what journalism schools must do to prepare the next generation of journalists.Key topics include:Why journalism education must move beyond teaching AI as just a tool and instead frame it as a socio-technical phenomenon.How to embed AI literacy in classrooms by separating hype from reality, contextualizing the history of AI, and examining its cultural and ethical limits.Practical strategies Djordje uses to structure his Stanford course, from lab-style experimentation to peer-led discussions that uncover both opportunities and pitfalls of tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and NotebookLM.The importance of teaching students not just how to use AI but how to critically assess its strengths, biases, and limitations.What a future journalism curriculum or degree built around AI might look like, and how educators across disciplines can prepare the next generation of reporters.Sign up for the Newsroom Robots newsletter for episode summaries and insights from host Nikita Roy. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.