Newsrooms.AI: Trending Topics launches AI-driven MediaTech
There are many different perspectives on what the future of media will look like, but one thing is clear: this future will have a lot to do with artificial intelligence, large language models (LLMs), and open source. That’s why Trending Topics has started a new project called Newsrooms.AI , which is intended to become the ultimate companion for content creators. For Trending Topics this is a big step in the transformation from a media company to a MediaTech Company.
Newsrooms.AI is now receiving funding from the Austrian Research Promotion Agency (FFG) using funds from the Future Austria Fund as part of the “Expedition Future” call for proposals. The aim is to expand Newsrooms.AI into a comprehensive digital helper for creating content. “We have been using AI tools in the editorial department for a long time and will now gradually expand Newsrooms.AI to include more and more useful functions,” says Jakob Steinschaden, co-founder of Trending Topics.
“Initially, Newsrooms.AI will be used for Trending Topics itself, then we will also make the AI tool available to other companies. We are extremely pleased that the FFG is supporting our project with funding and thus contributing to the further development of the future of media in the AI age.”
The first features of Newsrooms.AI will soon be integrated into the Trending Topics news portal. The first features of Newsrooms.AI include:
- News Summary
- Podcast & Interview Transcription
- Generation of headlines
- Automated interviews
- Learning the writing style using a vector database
- and much more.
Focus on open source and AI from the EU
In order to be able to implement the pioneering Newsrooms.AI project, a young, committed top team is already working for Newsrooms.AI. Prompt engineers, backend, and frontend developers are developing Newsrooms.AI in synchrony with the forthcoming GDPR and AI Act rules.
With Newsrooms.AI, we take an LLM-agnostic approach to development. Although GPT-4 Turbo from OpenAI is currently still the market leader and is also used at Newsrooms.AI, the tech infrastructure is structured in such a way that alternative large language models can also be integrated via API. In particular, we expect big leaps in new models from European providers such as Mistral AI and Aleph Alpha – this promises to soon replace the AI models from OpenAI with AI models from European providers.
Expansion into an AI-driven Chat News Platform (CNP)
In which direction will Newsrooms.AI continue to develop? The founders give an outlook: “Users, readers, interview partners, customers, cooperation partners – as a media company, we are in permanent two-way communication with a wide variety of stakeholders,” say Steinschaden and Kellhofer. “With the help of generative AI, there are many opportunities to automate this communication more and thus support employees in their daily work. It is therefore obvious to expand Newsrooms.AI into a chat news platform with a wide variety of applications, similar to mini apps.”
The first AI-driven news content app will be launched soon – stay tuned!
