Radio France is experimenting with news to get the best advantage from new AI technologies, while maintaining human news judgement
In a summit session at RadioDays Europe, Radio France’s Deputy Director of News, Florent Latrive told conference delegates that AI is mainly being used for editing and publishing assistance plus editorial analysis.
The French national public service broadcaster uses Whisper for its transcription service, but keeps it inside its own systems, it does not use the public online version.
Within its news systems, AI is used to assist journalists for quick audio and video editing, finding chapters within existing content to cross reference with a current story, to cross check names and titles and to identify where those people appear in other reports. AI is also used to retype voiceovers for use as text and transcripts.
“For podcasts and video clips, AI within our system can make summaries, chapters and recommend SEO titles. It also provides digital accessibility for people with hearing disabilities,” said Latrive.
150 podcast shows are available as text due to AI assistance, pictures can be captioned and pictures from earlier news reports can be identified for inclusion if required.
Publishing Assistance. Latrive gave an example of a series on ancient roman buildings. “We used AI to find the best segment/anecdote from a longer show to use as teasers, audio segments, and social media content. We also use AI to reversion these segments in different languages.”
Editorial Analysis. With balance being important for public service broadcasters, Radio France is using AI to count minutes of content on important topics across all its output channels to add up how many items or minutes are covered in each topic so that managers and editors can get regular reports and decide whether another angle needs more coverage to maintain balance.
Radio France also uses AI to analyse guests by gender or expertise. From the analysis, editors can make choices of how to rebalance topics or types of speakers if necessary.
The Battle for Reality. In the face of floods of disinformation in media, social media and search, Latrive says using AI can help keep track of untrue or incomplete information being published on other platforms.
“We are working a lot on disinformation. We need to work together with other media companies on this.
“First is fact checking. We use AI software to analyse social networks and check against honest databases. In Europe our public service broadcasters are sharing information databases for this.”
Arlequin.AI analyses and maps the links between stories and identifies who is saying what. “That is what is needed to detect foreign manipulation on social networks. It empowers our journalists.
“The front line of the battle ground for reality is also inside our organisations. Trust and Voice are the centre of this battle for reality,” he said.
He warned about using AI without knowing what is “inside the black box.” AI seems like an easy thing to use, but responsible broadcasters need to understand the tools they are using and watch out for hallucinations and algorithm errors. If misused, “AI can hurt quality of output and quantity of jobs.”
As a result of the work done within Radio France, Latrive’s newsroom has decided to tell its audience when and how it is using AI and to stick to public service broadcasting convictions.
“We are using AI for empowerment not replacement… We have intentionally built in speed bumps to slow our journalists down and remind them to be cautious… If used well AI will improve the autonomy of journalists and editorial staff.”
Trust and Authenticity. With so much AI generated content expected to flood the internet over the next few years, fuelling misinformation and shallow reporting, Radio France has adopted the approach of “we are real and our audience is real” to maintain trust and authenticity.
The Secretary General of Radio France was featured in the CEO panel at RadioDays, where he also spoke about the importance of ‘shared reality.’
Don’t be fooled, public service media is more important than ever #RDE25