10:00 a.m.-12:30 p.m.
(New York time)
Get grounded in the fundamentals of agentic AI. We’ll demystify what agents are, how they work, and why they matter for news organisations. This session will map the shift from search to answer to agents, outline the major players and technologies shaping the space, and explore why this represents more than just another tech trend. Expect a clear overview that connects the dots between today’s experiments and tomorrow’s digital ecosystems.
From Tools to Agents: What’s Really Changing in AI for News
David Caswell is a leading thinker and practitioner at the intersection of AI, product strategy, and news media. Founder of StoryFlow and former executive product manager at BBC News and BBC News Labs, he has spent more than a decade applying machine learning and, more recently, large language models inside real-world, high-stakes information workflows. In this keynote, he will explore the shift from AI tools to agentic systems, drawing on hands-on experience building and advising on multi-agent workflows. He will cut through the hype to focus on what is actually changing now, what will shift next, and how organisations should think about adoption, diffusion, and strategy as agentic AI moves rapidly into production.
Inside the Agentic Shift: Early Lessons for News Media
Fresh from an MIT course on agentic AI, INMA’s Digital Platform lead Robert Whitehead will share insights and practical guidance on how agentic systems are beginning to reshape the future of news media. Drawing on his work leading INMA’s Digital Platform Initiative — which works closely with publishers on product strategy, platform transformation, and emerging technologies — Robert will connect early experimentation with agents to real-world newsroom and product decisions. The session will explore what INMA is seeing across its global member network: where agents are already delivering value, where assumptions are being challenged, and what news organisations should start building and testing now as the industry moves toward more agent-driven models.
The foundations of monetisation in an agent-driven world
As AI agents increasingly mediate how audiences discover, access, and pay for content, the rules of monetisation are beginning to shift. This session sets out the core frameworks that make monetisation possible in agent-led environments, exploring where approaches converge across platforms — and where they diverge. We’ll examine emerging revenue routes for content creators, from subscriptions and bundled access to wallets, usage-based payments, and new forms of value exchange, alongside the infrastructure and signals required to support them. The session will also look at realistic timelines for adoption, separating near-term opportunities from longer-term bets, and outlining what news and content companies should be preparing for now.
