Newsroom Robots

Florent Daudens, the outgoing Director of Newsgathering and Deployment at Canada's National Public Broadcaster, Radio-Canada, joins Nikita Roy to share how he led AI literacy initiatives in their newsroom. In his role, Florent focused on enhancing the news department with AI as well as managing operations across national, parliamentary, and foreign bureaus.

With a passion for AI and technology trends, Florent has contributed to ...

Ezra Eeman, the Director of Strategy & Innovation at the Dutch Public Broadcaster NPO joins Nikita Roy to discuss NPO's AI strategy, revealing the complexities of navigating this frontier within a decentralized network of 13 broadcasters. From leveraging AI for accessibility and efficiency to cautious experiments with synthetic voices and avatars, NPO's approach offers a fascinating case study in balancing innovation with publi...

Craig Newmark, internet pioneer and founder of Craigslist, joins Nikita Roy to talk about the past, present, and future of AI. 

Craig is a visionary whose profound contributions have shaped the landscape of digital platforms and supported the pillars of journalism. 

As the founder of Craigslist, he revolutionized the classified ads sector and transformed how people buy, sell, and connect within their local communiti...

From fine-tuning large language models, to discussing modular journalism, to developing an AI tool to help track misinformation, there’s a lot to unpack from this week’s conversation with Alessandro Alviani, the product lead for AI at Germany’s Ippen Digital. We build upon the first part of our conversation from last week, where Alessandro shared his editor-centric approach toward building AI products. 

A core takeawa...

Rather than AI replacing journalists, Alessandro Alviani believes editorial teams can leverage AI to enhance and augment their work. 

Formerly as the Editorial Director at the Microsoft News Hub, Alessandro experienced firsthand the consequences that replacing human editors with automated systems caused. Drawing from his experience he says that the key is to empower journalists with AI tools rather than displace them. "It's...

Jeff Jarvis joins Nikita Roy in the second part of his conversation to discuss how journalism business models will be affected by the rise of generative AI.

In part one, Jarvis shared his thoughts on whether generative AI companies should be allowed to use news media's copyrighted content to train their AI models.

Jarvis has been the director of the Tow-Knight Center for Entrepreneurial Journalism at the Craig Newmark Graduat...

Jeff Jarvis joins Nikita Roy to discuss whether AI companies should be allowed to use news media's copyrighted content to train their models. 

Jarvis is a veteran journalist and professor who recently testified to the US Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology, and Law on AI and the Future of Journalism. He's been the director of the Tow-Knight Center for Entrepreneurial Journalism at the Craig Newmark Graduate...

Aliya Itzkowitz and Sam Gould from FT Strategies join Nikita Roy to discuss the capabilities of multimodal AI and AI agents within the publishing industry. Discover further insights and practical examples of these technologies in the Newsroom Robots newsletter, featuring insights from host, Nikita Roy.

Aliya is a Manager at FT Strategies where she has consulted over 30 publishers across Europe, Asia, Africa and North America. H...

Aliya Itzkowitz and Sam Gould from FT Strategies join Nikita Roy to discuss their AI Design Sprint that they used to help nearly 20 publishers identify and validate potential AI opportunities. 

Aliya is a Manager at FT Strategies where she has consulted over 30 publishers across Europe, Asia, Africa and North America. Her work focuses on the critical shifts facing publishers today, including rethinking revenue models and un...

Nina Brown and Jared Schroeder join Nikita Roy to break down the intellectual property implications of generative AI models and explore the legal implications of using generative AI in newsrooms. 

They examine the risks and liabilities associated with Generative AI outputs and historical legal precedents that could shape Generative AI regulations.

Nina Brown is an award-winning assistant professor at the Newhouse School ...

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 profess...

How does a newsroom leader spearhead AI innovation when AI still remains a buzzword to much of their staff? 

Louise Story joins Nikita Roy to highlight the opportunities AI presents for reporting, content creation, user experience, and personalization. Story also discusses the role of journalists in the AI era and the potential impact of generative AI on the business model of the news industry.

Louise is the form...

David Clinch, the Vice President of Partnership at Mather Economics and Managing Director at Media Growth Partners, joins Nikita Roy to discuss the critical choice between building or buying AI tools in newsrooms. With his extensive experience advising major publishers, David sheds light on how AI is reshaping newsroom strategies and the critical trade-offs news organizations face in the era of AI adoption.

David has worked...

In this second part of the episode with Simon Willison, he shares how Datasette, the open-source data exploration and publishing tool he built, could help journalists perform data analysis with minimum technical expertise. He also shares some fun use cases of ChatGPT in his personal life. 

Simon, a former software architect at The Guardian and a JSK Journalism Fellow at Stanford University, currently works full-time to buil...

Simon Willison, the creator of the open source data exploration and publishing tool Datasette, joins Nikita Roy to discuss the recent turmoil at Open AI and the new features unveiled at OpenAI’s first developer conference earlier this month.They discuss the security risks inherent in generative AI applications and explore the usefulness of small language models for journalists, particularly for analyzing sensitive data on personal ...

Lynn Walsh, the Assistant Director of Trusting News, joins Nikita Roy to discuss how newsrooms should think about their relationship with audiences when adopting AI. She also highlights opportunities to use AI to enhance trust and engagement with the news.

Lynn is an Emmy Award-winning journalist who has worked in investigative, data and TV journalism for over 15 years. Currently at Trusting News, she works to help rebuild t...

Dr. Mario R. Garcia, Senior Adviser on News Design and Adjunct Professor at Columbia University, joins Nikita Roy to discuss how artificial intelligence is revolutionizing news design and creating new opportunities for visual storytelling.

Mario shares insights from his extensive research and his new book, 'AI: The Next Revolution in Content Creation,' on how AI is being applied in newsrooms globally.

Mario offers his...

Paul Quigley, the CEO of NewsWhip, joins Nikita Roy to discuss how NewsWhip aids newsrooms in identifying trending stories and predicting viral news through real-time social media monitoring and analytics. He discusses how his team is integrating large language models and shares his perspective on the transformative impact that generative AI could have on the news media business model.

NewsWhip, an innovative technology, is ...

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In this episode, Jeff Sonderman, the founder and CEO of Delta Flow Solutions, joins Nikita Roy to discuss the transformative potential of generative AI in streamlining business operations across analytics, marketing, product management, and content accessibility. Jeff also shares...