As we move through 2025, one trend is emerging in my conversations with INMA members: The initial flurry of experimentation with GenAI is giving way to slower, more controlled scaling of projects.

After several months of working feverishly on interesting projects, of rolling around in digital sandboxes, many members are now letting the dust settle and proceeding with caution as they thoughtfully roll out solutions. 

“We’ve done a lot of experimentation with some pretty good pilots for the newsroom and for engineers. We’re now in the space of selecting two or three of those and investing in them properly,” the chief technology officer of one Asia-Pacific publisher told INMA. 

“What’s been interesting for us is that pilots have been successful. But if we just took those capabilities and didn’t incorporate them into workflows, it would almost add a time tax. The work now is actually getting those capabilities into established workflows.

“This time last year, it was, ‘Let’s farm the ideas,’ whereas now it's more like, ‘Let’s focus on two or three.’”

Another executive in Asia echoed this sentiment. When asked what they were working on, he said, “There isn’t a showstopper. We’ve been working on smaller projects and we’ve been focusing on enabling AI on the backend of operations, editorial, the CMS, just generally streamlining.”

The head of an AI lab in North America said something similar: “The point we’re at right now is a mix of getting pilots into a more stabilised place and getting a new round of pilots for our newsroom workflow going.

“We have enough adoption around AI that it is coming up in everyone’s road maps,” with the AI lab simply acting as a consultant, he added.

Which is not to suggest the path to this point has been smooth and free of friction. Indeed, some publishers are honest about what didn’t work as well. For example, the head of product at a North American publisher told us about a chat product they spent months working on: “We started testing it. At the end of the day, the result it gave you was not as good as ChatGPT or Google Gemini. So, it got shelved — by me.”

Often, part of the challenge is getting the rest of the news organisation on board with AI projects. “My goal is to better explain and communicate what we do,” a European head of data science said. 

Or, as a German executive told INMA: “The ultimate challenge that we are facing is potentially cultural willingness to adopt AI solutions. Neither the business nor the journalists are really up for AI-driven innovation. We always emphasise the gains in productivity and how far along testing we are.”

An executive at an Indian brand said using AI was now table stakes. “Initially, I saw it as greenfield, but now I am being more considered. It opens up a lot of opportunities everywhere. Any competitor can use it for the same purposes that you can use it for. 

“At the end of the day, what makes one news outlet different from another is its specific point of view and that is not something that an AI can give you.”

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