APA presents new AI strategy “APA Trusted AI”
APA Trusted AI as a milestone of the Austrian news agency group‘s ongoing digital strategy – APA CEO Clemens Pig: “The new AI technologies are powerful tools; they belong in secure hands and require a fact-based, reliable environment.”
Alongside Digital Workplace and Digital Platforms, the innovative field of Data & AI forms the third pillar of APA Group’s current digital strategy. In his keynote address at an event held on Thursday morning at the APA Press Centre, APA CEO Clemens Pig presented the key aspects of APA Trusted AI, the future AI strategy for journalism and communication.
“Trusted AI is the logical further development of Trusted Content. APA has been intensively involved in the topic of artificial intelligence for many years and, as a first mover, already uses numerous AI components in its production and business processes in text, speech and visuals. That’s why we have also adopted our own guideline for the responsible and transparent use of AI at APA. With generative AI, new powerful tools are now on the rise that belong in secure hands and a secure environment. This environment is the fact-based and reliable cooperative ecosystem of APA”, APA CEO Clemens Pig says.
New AI strategy
The new AI strategy is based on comprehensive analyses by APA of the areas of application and requirements of artificial intelligence in the Austrian media and communications market, including the AI.AT.Media study, and defines the individual AI fields of activity and tools in the news agency. A specially developed guideline for handling artificial intelligence forms the governance, from technological development to the rollout of APA’s editorial AI services.
The fields of activity of APA Trusted AI are:
- The integration of AI tools in APA production tools
Speech-to-text solutions, facial and logo recognition, automated abstracting, text assistants and more - The integration of AI in the APA product world for journalism and communications
APA-Signals (content monitoring, weighting and presentation), text-to-other formats, media topics, data journalism, defalsif-AI (forensic media took for identifying fake news) and more - AI tool research and governance
Studies, guidelines, needs assessment, cooperations, training initiatives, innovation partnerships and more
For a rapid transfer into APA’s cooperative ecosystem, individual projects such as APA-Signals are being implemented as part of a transformational cooperation with Google.
Generative AI is “currently not a journalistic research tool,” Pig clarified; “but GPT-based technologies are potentially powerful tools to support content creation, processing and analysis.”
Expert group Trusted AI
About ten experts at APA-medialab, APA’s digital innovation centre, are responsible for developing and implementing APA Trusted AI. Coordination and management are handled by Verena Krawarik (Head of Innovation Management), Katharina Schell (Deputy Editor-in-Chief) and Andreas Mauczka (Chief Digital Officer). In the area of new digital job profiles, APA has also filled the position of prompt engineer to optimise AI-supported applications since March.
APA – a data- and AI-based production platform
As a strategic goal of the new AI strategy, Pig mentions “the further development of the news agency from a multimedia content supplier to a data- and AI-based production platform. APA has always been an organisational platform for joint products and solutions. In a digital interpretation of our basic mission, we are now evolving into a collaborative platform that is closely connected to media production systems and provides seamless access to APA solutions such as Trusted AI. One specific vision is the development of an Austrian AI media hub as a common knowledge space for domestic media companies, where artificial intelligence can be used based on fact-based information,” Pig says.