Artificial Intelligence has been quietly working behind the scenes for many years, but in the past two years it has stepped into the spotlight in a big way, raising questions and changing operations for news media companies.

During this week’s members-only Webinar, Insights on how the Indian Express uses GenAI, INMA members heard from Nandagopal Rajan, chief operating officer/digital, as he shared insights into how AI is changing the news media industry and how Indian Express is harnessing its power.

“AI is not a new technology. It’s been in the works for decades,” he explained. “It’s just hit an inflexion point recently, with ChatGPT being the primary reason.”

He quoted Coursera co-founder Dr. Andrew Ng, who said, “AI is like electricity … it will be everywhere,” explaining that while AI can significantly enhance efficiency, there are critical pitfalls to avoid.

When looking at AI tools for the newsroom, Rajan said too many companies don’t have the important conversation about what newsrooms really want from it. Adoption has been slow and newsrooms aren’t using AI products that have been created because they don’t find value in them, he said.

“There are not enough conversations happening around the problems that AI can solve for journalists. And is this because journalists are not really involved in those conversations? Or these products are being pushed by the product people or the engineering people? I think that’s something people need to discuss a lot more.”

Newsrooms should have multi-departmental conversations on how to use AI and where it’s most appropriate. “Otherwise, what happens is that the first thing people want to do is to create more content.”

Proper use of GenAI in the newsroom

AI can act as a powerful tool for journalists, aiding in research by compiling and collating massive amounts of information quickly and accurately. It can also assist in editing, extend the reach of content on social media, and provide data analytics.

With AI, news media organisations can improve personalisation and tailor content to individual reader preferences, helping audiences connect with the articles relevant to them in the growing volumes of information.

When it comes to using AI for generating content, however, Rajan encouraged companies not to jump on board the content creation bandwagon: “Why would you want AI to [create] content for you? That’s like outsourcing your soul.”

Using AI for content creation was opening the door to potential problems and would require more supervision, he said: “Anybody who has used AI for content creation or anything to do with content knows that you really need to be on your toes,” he said, adding that companies who are using GenAI to create content need to invest in more editors and the risk of errors is high. The AI may return content with incorrect information, unclear attribution, or copyrighted and proprietary information.

“You literally need to go back and check everything again if you’re going to use AI,” Rajan said.

Putting GenAI to work

Rajan recommended news companies instead explore its other capabilities, such as assisting with research or becoming the “knowledge graph” of the company, tapping into the organisation’s collective intelligence and leveraging information that is buried in the archives.

At Indian Express, AI-generated images have been used in print, often accompanying a story about AI. AI has helped improve SEO-driven descriptions and find keywords and can also assist in translation. However, Rajan doesn’t think the translation feature is fully baked because it still can’t pick up the nuances of all the different languages.

“So, of course, we can use it, but it needs to have that editorial control to ensure that there is no dissonance on the reader’s part,” he said.

Another way the company is successfully using GenAI is for marketing, which seems to come naturally: “Even when you ask it for regular things, it comes up with output that has a marketing tone to it. I don’t know whether it is a data that was used to train it,” he said. “But it seems to do marketing well.”

It’s also useful for creating customer personas based on information such as reader surveys. When Indian Express entered data from a survey with about 2,000 responses, it identified the top three user personas, including one the company wasn’t aware of.

Express Shorts engages users 

Indian Express has embraced AI through its innovative Express Shorts app, developed during an internal hackathon. The app bridges the gap between readers and the massive amount of content on the platform.

Express Shorts provides a mix of exclusive stories and trending news, designed for readers who may be intimidated by longer articles or overwhelmed by the number of stories on the Web site. The mobile-friendly solution serves up bite-sized summaries that encourage deeper engagement with the content.

“We have a lot of people who come back again and again and find it tedious to go through everything they can find here,” Rajan explained. “So this is, in a way, a curated express feed, which is a mix of what Express stands for and what we think is interesting and what a lot of people are reading.”

Indian Express posts about 350 to 400 stories daily — far more than any reader can consume. The idea of the app was to make users understand what’s there for them and quickly navigate to content they would read regularly.

The process begins when a story is published. AI generates a summary that an editor reviews before it goes live, ensuring the summary is accurate and meets editorial standards.

Since its launch, Express Shorts has significantly boosted user engagement. For every 100 shorts consumed, readers click through to about 12 longer articles, indicating the app effectively directs traffic to more in-depth content.

The app has seen a month-on-month growth of approximately 40%, with users engaging more deeply with the platform, averaging three times more pages per session.

“In the past year or so, we haven’t done a product which has done this well for us, and it’s solving a lot of problems that we have had for a long,” Rajan said. And the best thing is that it can get better.”

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