Artificial Intelligence has moved from fringe novelty to foundational infrastructure in the media business. It’s no longer about speculation. AI is shaping how news is produced, distributed, and consumed.

At the Generative AI Seminar hosted as part of the INMA World Congress of News Media in New York last week, media executives and innovators from across the world shared how their media organisations are moving forward.

Stefan Ottlitz, chief executive officer at Spiegel Group, put it bluntly: “AI is going to be everywhere in our products.” The urgency is clear: journalism must adapt, not just survive, in this new era.

AI as the interface at Der Spiegel

Ottlitz challenged the idea that media organisations are still the central hub of news consumption.

“AI agents that are going to emerge, or the AI platforms, or whatever we call it, are now really challenging us to rethink how much of a center we are,” he said.

AI agents like Siri and ChatGPT are becoming the user’s interface with the Internet. “Really, going on the Internet and surfing for stuff is not necessarily a thing people are going to do that much anymore because the rest is so sexy,” Ottlitz said.

Spiegel.de, which earns over 50% of its revenue from digital and reaches 12 million users, is positioning itself for this shift by prioritising user experience, liquid content (content that can seamlessly move across platforms), and editorial excellence — not just AI for automation’s sake.

“It’s not about more or cheaper content,” Ottlitz emphasised. “It should be about good journalism.”

Speed, summarisation, and trust at The Independent

James Martin, executive director of new products and innovations at The Independent, outlined how the news publisher created Bulletin, a brand for time-poor readers. It uses AI-generated bullet point summaries and key headlines to give users digestible news updates — all while preserving editorial integrity.

“We spend hours, and days, and months drafting fantastic original journalism,” Martin said. “But if we can’t get people to read that long-form journalism, wouldn’t we want them to at least read a version of that journalism?”

The project was born from collaborative “Hack Days” that brought stakeholders from editorial, product, and commercial teams into one room to create viable workflows. Importantly, AI guardrails were set: human editors always review AI-generated content, and bylines remain human. Trust remains a non-negotiable value.

Managing change and building AI literacy at Mediahuis

Jessica Bulthé, chief data and insights officer at Mediahuis, described their change management strategy as “running a marathon on a treadmill blindfolded.”

To guide 7,000 employees across six countries, they launched an internal programme called AIM (AI + Mediahuis) to increase the adoption rate of AI with newsletters, a Slack channel, videos explaining concepts like “agents,” and frequent hackathons.

The GenAI Studio team develops newsroom tools — brand-specific summarisers, searchable archives, headline generators — with one non-negotiable: co-creation with journalists.

“Respect for journalism,” Bulthé said, adding the company understands the fear of being replaced exists among journalists. “We want to join them like ‘OK, we’re not going to replace this work for you, but we really want to help you to get your journalism to the next level.’”

One hit product is News Discovery, a tool that scans global news sources, translates content, and generates summaries. It is heavily used during summer when people tend to travel to other countries. Another tool is an auto-video generator for text stories that impressed both editorial and commercial teams.

Experimentation with purpose at Financial Times

At the Financial Times, AI is viewed as essential to sustainability.

“It’s imperative for our survival as media organisations,” said Aliya Itzkowitz, manager at FT Strategies. The FT developed Ask FT, an AI assistant designed for B2B users needing quick, trustworthy insights.

Another innovation was a system that draws from FT archives to define financial terms — with some humorous stumbles, for example, defining “Bond” without providing a James Bond-related answer.

The FT has also created an AI Playground for journalists to test tools in a safe, controlled environment and formed working groups tied to AI principles like transparency and governance.

Nikkei’s chatbot boosts subscriber engagement

Japan’s Nikkei, which owns the Financial Times, has developed Ask Nikkei, a chatbot trained solely on its own content, Ryoichi Emura and Yosuke Suzuki shared.

If no relevant article exists, the bot simply doesn’t answer — prioritising accuracy and trust. It can answer within five seconds and provide clearly sourced explanations. Pre-generated questions help the system maintain editorial control and performance.

Beyond hype: What’s next?

From skepticism to strategy, the industry has reached a consensus: AI is here to stay — and human oversight must stay with it. Some universal takeaways from these initiatives:

• Talk to all platforms: Don’t wait for Google or Apple to dictate terms. Engage early.
• Guardrails are essential: Transparency, attribution, and human control are non-negotiable.
• Liquid content is the future: Content must flow across platforms and interfaces — voice, chat, video, earbuds, glasses.
• No need to reinvent the wheel: Start small, iterate fast, and make your existing content work harder.

As Ottlitz put it, “In the end, it’s about building a sustainable ecosystem, a new iteration of this around visibility technology, and some kind of fair value exchange.”

Currently, the question isn’t if media organisations should use AI — it’s how to do it responsibly, creatively, and with purpose.

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