In which ways is GenAI a game-changer for journalism? 

It’s giving us new opportunities to streamline our processes, making our newsrooms and operations more efficient, and to create new experiences. This enables teams to focus more on the heart of journalism: creating compelling stories and digging deep into investigations. Plus AI enables us to offer a wider range of content, from special interest pieces to more localized stories, which opens additional avenues for advertising revenue. And let’s not forget about data journalism. Recognizing patterns in large datasets is invaluable for uncovering important trends and insights that might have otherwise gone unnoticed. 

What are Axel Springer’s hopes and expectations for GenAI? 

We’re convinced that AI offers great opportunities, and we want to lead the way in embracing them. AI will revolutionize journalism and all parts of our business. While we’re mindful of the challenges it brings, we’re really excited about the possibilities it presents for our core business, which is journalistic creation. Our focus is on researching exclusive news, highlighting personal experience in features, as well as providing original commentary. Thanks to GenAI, in the long run, journalistic production will become a by-product, more technically supported and automated. Understanding and adapting to this shift is crucial to sustain our business. 

What kind of mindset and behaviour do you encourage in the company? 

Ever since Axel Springer founded his company in a barn, a pioneering spirit has been part of its DNA. We will not wait until all the questions AI has raised have been answered. We want to experiment, encourage and empower our staff instead of observing disruptions from the sidelines.

How are you going about this?

Upskilling continues to stay on top of our global talent and culture agenda to meet the changing conditions and requirements within the industry. This means that we’re not only looking at this from a technological angle but also a cultural one. We’re focusing on identifying and closing skills gaps. We’re convinced that creating enthusiasm for AI throughout the company and empowering employees accordingly will provide a crucial competitive advantage. Lifelong learning and openness to technology and tools will make the difference. 

In this spirit, we’ve sent a handful of executives and experts on an AI expedition to existing and emerging AI hubs worldwide to enable them to immerse themselves into local AI scenes and explore opportunities for Axel Springer. The destinations include San Francisco, Seoul, Tokyo and Singapore. Having boots on the ground and being close to the builders will help our businesses as we share the knowledge gained in these fellowships broadly within the organization so that everyone can benefit from their experience. 

The New York Times and others sued OpenAI; you struck a deal. Could you explain the reasons behind that decision? What are your hopes connected with this deal? 

Our landmark partnership with OpenAI marks a paradigm shift in journalism which we’re proud of. For the first time ever, we’re seeing a revenue stream from an AI company to a media company for the use of recent content, establishing the principle of remuneration. Our partnership with OpenAI has opened a path that we hope many other publishers will follow.  

Can you talk about what OpenAI will give you in return?

The deal has strategic value for us. In addition to the revenue stream that we’ve established with this deal, our partnership with OpenAI will further increase the visibility of the exceptional reporting that our journalists do and introduce their work to new audiences.

Who at Axel Springer makes decisions concerning AI? How have you institutionalized these? 

AI is a top priority at the Executive Board level. We ensure that our strategic initiatives are aligned with our long-term goals. This means we continuously iterate and update our approach. Year one of GenAI was focused around creating momentum across the organization. This was centred around a three-pillar approach comprising education and exchange, optimization and exploration in a hybrid setup which combines central offers and initiatives from the HQ and empowers decentral initiatives steered by the business units. 

Could you be a bit more specific?

In the education and exchange pillar, we broadly equip employees with the skills needed to be ready for tomorrow’s disruptions and connect our experts with each other. Various exchange events throughout the year give our experts the opportunity to learn from each other. 

Our annual Media & Tech Con brings together over 1,000 colleagues in Berlin for a day of sharing best practices, learning and inspiring each other. In the optimization pillar, we’re improving products, processes and rethinking business models, right at the core of our brands and units. 

And lastly, in the exploration pillar, we’re using the Group’s global power to advance in GenAI. In spring of 2023, we founded our global GenAI team as a ramp-up and to create momentum. In the autumn, we started the AI ambassador network, where we connect dedicated ambassadors from each of our biggest brands in regular exchanges and best-practice sessions.

What’s your favourite GenAI product or use case – in your company or beyond? 

There’s a wide range of different use cases for GenAI at Axel Springer. We’ve dedicated an internal website to our use cases that employees can screen to get inspired and find best practices that they can adapt to their own products and processes. So, there are many great and creative use cases. 

One example is how Business Insider Germany increased their efficiency through using AI. The team uses the technology to almost completely automate the production and distribution of their stories. This has enabled them to launch several audio and video formats tailored specifically to younger audiences that will be key for further growth and for ensuring that most of their resources go into the core of journalism. 

Another example is the Content Analyzer, a tool that was developed in-house and is used by editors. It can generate suggestions for headlines, SEO lines, conversion outlines and social posts, or run a text through a “Wolf-Schneider filter” [named after a late German journalism school director well-known for his profound language criticism]. 

Will these efficiency gains cost jobs? Your CEO Mathias Döpfner was probably the first German media manager to be outspoken about job cuts because of AI

For sure, some jobs will cease to exist in the future, while new jobs and profiles will emerge. This has always been a natural consequence of technological progress. I mentioned before that journalistic production will become a by-product. There are many things AI can do more efficiently than humans. However, what journalists will always do better is research exclusive news, write surprising commentaries, and conduct inspiring interviews. That is why we’re concentrating on the core of journalism.

Do you think journalism will develop from being a push activity where news is pushed at people to a pull activity when people will demand customized news that fit their needs? 

Absolutely, I think this shift is nothing new. It has always been the purpose of journalism to make stories so relevant that people actively pull them into their lives. The distribution channels have evolved over time, and we’ve adapted to that. And we’ll continue to do so. With the help of AI and customization as well as data to better understand our diverse audiences we’ll continue working on new products and channels to serve our users in the best way possible. 

Many people are worried about misinformation. Are those fears justified or overblown, and have you encountered examples that worry you? 

AI is a product of human formulations and algorithms. It’s fallible. AI hallucinations are part of reality. That’s why it’s so important to develop the necessary skills to ensure a responsible use of AI. Our employees need to be able to recognize misinformation. We promote that, for example, in our upskilling seminars at the Axel Springer Academy of Journalism and Technology. There, we offer training sessions on OSINT (open-source intelligence) and fact-checking where employees learn techniques for verifying AI-generated content. It includes identifying suspicious patterns and inconsistencies, checking internal and external logic, and exposing manipulation and misinformation. 

Some of the dynamics are beyond the influence of the media industry. In which ways do you think AI should be regulated? 

We’re aware of the challenges and currently taking a very close look at aspects such as data protection, regulation and fair remuneration for the use of our content as training data. For us, this presents an opportunity to avoid repeating the mistakes of platform regulation and create a fair and healthy ecosystem from very early on. Journalism is a part of the value chain and this needs to be reflected. To achieve this, we need a triad of competition law, copyright law and data protection law. Of course, we are striving for a fair balance of interests between platforms and publishers, and our partnership with OpenAI is a great example of that. A deal like this requires the willingness of all parties involved to achieve good results. There are several initiatives in this regard, and much is evolving.