Collect your study tour registration credentials, and meet your tour mates over breakfast.
In the opening session, we will have a welcome address for the tour, icebreakers to get to know each other, and a briefing on the intersection of Silicon Valley, media, and technology.
Otter.ai has pioneered the use of AI assistants in meetings, transforming how audio and transcription are integrated into business workflows. As one of the first companies to explore AI agents and personas, Otter.ai continues to shape the future of workplace collaboration. Join founder Sam Liang and the Otter.ai team as they share insights on maintaining their market leadership, addressing privacy in an era of smart devices, the evolving role of AI agents, multilingual innovation, and the future of “liquid content” in both speech-to-text and beyond.
Over lunch at Stanford University, we will meet two executives working on different areas of AI. Cheryl Phillips’ Big Local News Initiative at Stanford lowers the cost of accountability journalism by pooling and sharing critical datasets — tracking layoffs, local government agendas, and police misconduct. The project now integrates AI tools like DataTalk to make complex datasets searchable through natural language, powering local investigations while keeping data secure from commercial scraping. Professor Nate Persily explores how AI and major platforms shape news visibility, neutrality, and trust. He will examine the risks of bias in AI tools and strategies to counter it, from transparency to stronger editorial standards. With new regulatory frameworks emerging in Europe and beyond, he will also highlight opportunities for media and policy collaboration. The session will close with practical guidance for news leaders on how to engage proactively with AI, balancing innovation, governance, and accountability in a rapidly evolving digital landscape.
At Google’s Mountain View campus, we will have an in-depth session exploring how AI is reshaping the news and information landscape. This visit will offer a look at Google’s latest innovations in search, media integrity, and data privacy, with a focus on how these advancements are impacting newsrooms worldwide. We will dive into the challenges and opportunities presented by AI-driven content discovery, fact-checking, and audience engagement, while also discussing strategies to uphold trust and editorial quality in a rapidly evolving digital ecosystem.
Over dinner, we will unbundle Day 1 of the study tour, the pivot to discover how the New York Times’ head of games is steering an incredible journey — from record-breaking engagement to groundbreaking product evolution. Experience first-hand how NYT Games has become a cultural phenomenon with crossword records shattered, Wordle crazes fueled, and new puzzle titles captivating millions. Now, with emerging AI tools and tech breakthroughs, NYT Games is entering its next era. Learn how AI is enhancing personalisation, enriching user experience, and inspiring smart, adaptive gameplay — while maintaining the human creativity and editorial quality at its heart.
As large language models (LLMs) grow, the active scraping of publisher sites — followed by large-scale harvesting of that data — often happens without visibility or consent. Many content creators remain unsure which bots are accessing their work, where it ends up, or how it’s being used. Leveraging its global scale, Cloudflare has introduced tools to bring friction into this process, from a “block” button to halt unauthorised scraping in real time to a pay-per-crawl beta programme that explores new economic models. These measures are part of a broader, meaningful discussion about the conditions needed for a fair market to emerge — one where publishers can protect their work, set access terms, and ensure equitable value exchange with AI developers. Study tour participants will gain a rare inside look at how Cloudflare detects scraping activity, enforces policies, and works to create a healthier balance between openness, control, and sustainable content economics in the AI age.
Arguably the company that has pushed Generative AI to the forefront, OpenAI has led the way for mass consumer adoption. In this session, we’ll talk with OpenAI about the future of the technology — and take a deep dive into ChatGPT apps, a new announcement from OpenAI’s Dev Day in October that shows exciting potential for news discovery, personalised experiences, and subscriber benefits.
After lunch hosted by Microsoft, INMA study tour participants will hear briefings from three of the company's divisions: MSN, LinkedIn, and Vermillio.
How is MSN re-thinking the news experience in an AI-driven world? In this session, Aparna Lakshmi Ratan — a seasoned AI product leader now heading MSN’s ranking and personalisation efforts — will share how Microsoft is applying cutting-edge AI to improve discovery, relevance, and engagement across its platform. From large-scale recommendation systems to LLM-powered summarisation features like “gems” and Copilot Daily, we will explore how MSN is using AI to guide users to quality journalism. With a focus on product strategy, user impact, and data-backed results, this session offers an insider’s view of how one of the world’s largest news aggregators is evolving to meet the moment.
LinkedIn is rapidly becoming a key top-of-funnel channel as search traffic declines, offering media companies a growing opportunity to reach professional audiences at scale. On this visit, we will explore how the platform is evolving its news experience — from showcasing perspectives from trusted sources to executive-driven updates to a high-performing video trends module. With a broader definition of news that now includes world events through a professional lens, LinkedIn is positioning itself as a vital distribution and engagement platform for publishers seeking relevance and reach in a changing discovery landscape.
Vermillio’s TraceID platform gives publishers the ability to see where and how their content is being used in AI systems. It can monitor text, images, video, voice, and music, detecting usage at a far more granular level than most tools — down to 100 tokens (words) for text, compared to the industry norm of around 250 words. For news organisations, that means identifying when specific articles, key lines, or even an individual writer’s style have been absorbed into a model. The technology can also reverse-engineer model knowledge to understand how publisher content is being combined with other sources in AI outputs. These insights can be used to quantify unlicensed use, inform negotiations, and verify that licensing agreements are being honoured — similar to how Content ID works for video (non-AI) but built for an Internet flooded with Generative AI content.
After a quick debrief of the day, study tour participants can enjoy an evening on their own in San Francisco. Our last stop of the day is a short 10-minute walk from Taj Campton Hotel. Participants can walk back or Uber back to their respective hotels.
Cyril Gorlla, Stanford-trained AI researcher and founder of CTGT, works with Fortune 500 companies and cyber-security leaders to bring transparency to high-risk AI deployments. In this session, he will explore how media companies can apply the same rigor to newsroom AI. Drawing on CTGT’s proprietary system for analysing the “anchors” large language models (LLMs) rely on, Cyril will address two urgent challenges: first, a cost-effective method to assess how much copyrighted material is embedded in any given model; second, how to ensure newsroom AI tools are accurate, brand-safe, and hallucination-free. With examples from live partnerships and insights from national security work, Cyril will make a compelling case for why transparency and auditability in AI aren’t optional — they’re essential.
How do you roll out AI across a news network with titles ranging from major metros to hyperlocals? In this session, Hearst shares its journey — from early experiments to today’s evolving strategy. Get an inside look at how the central editorial innovation team bridges product, tech and newsrooms while driving AI usage and cross-team collaboration. We’ll explore early projects, current initiatives, key learnings, and how Hearst is approaching accuracy, safety and scale across publications of all sizes.
Over lunch with Publisher and CEO Bill Nagel, we will discuss how they capitalise on being the main media in the tech epicenter of the world, challenges for local media in the United States, and how he is thinking about AI.
Michael Schmidt, global director for industry solutions in Media & Entertainment at AWS, and Demian Hess, solutions architect in Digital Publishing, will share an inside look at the impact AI is having on media and entertainment and key trends in the publishing industry. From Agentic AI, to content provenance with C2PA, to the importance of content protection and Model Context Servers, this session explores the infrastructure and innovations powering the future of publishing. Hear first-hand from AWS customers ArcXP and Vercel, who will share how they are building AI-powered solutions for content creation, personalization, and performance.
This session will dive deep into on-site answer engines, including a look at both knowledge and action-oriented AI agents. We’ll discuss You.com’s innovative AI agents — like ARI — and explore how their chat-first assistant is revolutionising media research, content strategy, and workflow efficiency. We will discuss how editorial teams are leveraging intelligent agents (e.g., fact-checkers, headline generators, trend trackers) to automate routine tasks and surface valuable insights across hundreds of sources in minutes.
After three days of study tour, what did we take away? What's the lead to the story? In this informal debrief before cocktails, work with our curators to distill a storyline to carry forward.
The “welcome reception” at Luma Hotel's Cavaña will give you a rooftop view of San Francisco's Mission Bay area, providing a panoramic city view that stretches from the Bay Bridge to Sutro Tower and beyond. This will be a beginning and end: The end of the three-day study tour and the beginning of our two-day conference. Connect with colleagues in a chic, Latin-infused welcome featuring drinks and tapas.
Join the INMA community at the Media Tech & AI Week by connecting with people face-to-face and sponsoring.
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