By Bing Hong Lok

Juan Carlos Lopez Calvet, Director of Data and AI at Schibsted Media, Norway, shared how they are harnessing the power of generative AI during WAN-IFRA’s Asian Media Leaders Summit in Singapore,

Lopez Calvet explained how Schibsted views AI, and highlighted their four guiding principles of its application.

• Defining what purpose AI serves in the newsroom. “So the first one, which we often discuss, is AI going to replace our workforce? Are we going to lose our jobs? So our first principle is to enhance, not replace.”  
• Trusting the results of AI. “None of this works if we don’t have truthful and trustful data and AI results. So for us, it’s very important that trust is our north star.”
• Responsible use. “We believe that AI must be fair and inclusive. It needs to represent and not exclude.”
• Ensuring that humans remain responsible and not just using tech for the sake of it. “We always add humans in the loop. We make humans accountable for anything that we do within AI, and we innovate with purpose.

Lopez Calvet also described Schibsted’s AI framework as three broad horizons:

• Horizon One, where AI is directed to make its services more efficient,
• Horizon Two, where the integration of AI will help expand its product range, and
• Horizon Three, where AI is used to create uniqueness in its services.  

Efficiency at the forefront

Schibsted has used GenAI to help users be more efficient at staying up to date with the news. More specifically, helping readers continue reading on topics they have already engaged in, without the risk of attention drain.

This comes in the form of a collapsible section that shows them what they read the last time they visited VG, and suggests stories and news that will likely be interested in.

Suggested stories, Lopez Calvet said, pulling up an example, have the same amount of click throughs as the first story as well as a maintained 85% thumbs up ratio or percentage. 

“This is really unheard of because this is usually the number that the first news would have. So we found a way to use AI that actually solves a problem,” Lopez Calvet.

Reducing costs, ensuring engagement

Schibsted has also implemented an in-house AI service called Videofy to dramatically reduce the cost and complexity of generating its news video content.

The service uses AI to generate 20-second videos instantly from any published article in any of Schibsted’s newspapers, automatically pulling text, images, and video clips already present in the source article. 

After any video is generated, editors retain the ability to make changes to the content before output, ensuring everything is accurate and journalistically sound before publication. 

The application is integrated into Schibsted’s Content Management System. When a writer finishes an article, the video generation option appears, allowing them to immediately start working on the video.

Real-time insights

One of the uses that Schibsted has identified is the use of GenAI to allow journalists to more easily tap into data and analytical insight.

“We have really rich data and a lot of good insights, but it’s not available easily because it’s always in a dashboard behind some password or something. And then nobody knows where the tables or graphics are,” Lopez Calvet.

Called ARIA, the tool functions as an AI framework of specialised agents, with each agent focusing on a particular data set. For example, different automated agents handle subscription, individual brand and newspaper data, with a coordinating agent overseeing the process to retrieve comprehensive answers.

This structure allows Schibsted staff to access real-time, compiled data at a glance simply by asking questions through platforms like Slack.

“This is really our way to democratise access to insights within Schibsted, something that was very difficult before. And now we have it available for anybody within the company,” Lopez Calvet.

To further enhance accessibility, Schibsted  is also working on integrating ARIA with ChatGPT, offering an even more intuitive interface for asking questions.

An AI toolbox available for all journalists

Generative AI is part of Schibsted journalists’ everyday toolbox, without going through external channels.

“The magic of this is that it was not even my team that made it. We made the capabilities available and then one of the journalists decided that it would be a good idea to have this toolbox so they could work faster.”

The AI toolbox helps generate potential questions and answers around specific articles, assisting journalists in developing potential questions and answers around articles. 

Journalists can test different models, including Claude or GPT, and these tools are now integrated into their daily workflows.

“We’re very lucky because we have a lot of support from our management team and have decided to really lean into AI. We are reinvesting all the revenue that we get from Open AI from our publisher agreement into internal activities for AI.”

“We also have a wide company-wide KPI about usage of AI tools, including ChatGPT and Gemini and some others,” Lopez Calvet added.

He stressed the need to keep working with AI and adapting it within workflows.

“I believe it completely changed how we deliver news. It can make everything else we do obsolete, so it’s a bit scary.

“But that’s why we need to be very active on the front and experiment quickly. That part makes it exciting, and if you plan forward for things, you need to think about how news looks different in, say, 18 months’ time,” Lopez Calvet said.

About the author: Bing Hong Lok is a communications student from Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.