The Media Copilot

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The Media Copilot episodes

November 10, 2023Putting AI Where Reporters Actually Work, With Ryan Restivo
There are thousands of generative AI tools for content, and some actually work well. Generative tools can create SEO headlines, social copy, document analysis, and lots more for reporters and editors, all ready to enhance your productivity.
However, there are roadblocks to incorporating these tools in day-to-day work. Beyond the basic concerns about quality and hallucinations, often the workflow itself is the issue: Incorporating a new tool typically means another login, another browser window open, and a new app to get familiar with. Then, if you’re constantly copying and pasting from the tool to your CMS and back again, the gains in efficiency start to drop. In other words, GenAI has the best chance of being effective when it’s integrated into existing workflows.
That’s the magic of YESEO, a tool developed by Ryan Restivo in partnership with the Reynolds Journalism Institute (RJI) at the University of Missouri. While there are any number of tools that will serve up SEO headlines for news stories, YESEO was created specifically for Slack, the collaboration platform found in almost every newsroom.
I spoke to Ryan about developing YESEO — which he began before the general release of ChatGPT — how newsrooms can develop a pragmatic approach to generative AI tools, and what a reporter’s workflow looks like in a future world where GenAI tools are as common as spellcheckers.
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The Media Copilot is a podcast and newsletter that explores how generative AI is changing media, journalism, and the news.

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Music: ⁠⁠⁠Favorite⁠⁠⁠ by Alexander Nakarada, licensed under Creative Commons BY Attribution 4.0 License

© AnyWho Media 2023
32 min
November 05, 2023How Media Can Survive in the Generative AI Era, with Brian Morrissey
It's still early days for generative AI, but the change it will inevitably impose on the news media is massive. If that sounds sounds scary to you, you should talk to someone. We'd recommend Brian Morrissey, author of The Rebooting newsletter and host of The Rebooting Show podcast, both of which get into the weeds of the media business.
In this wide-ranging conversation, Brian and Pete Pachal attack the big questions around GenAI and media: What happens when AI becomes the dominant force in search and SEO traffic to news sites dries up? What does the publisher-audience relationship look like in an AI-mediated world? And how can media companies get ahead of the coming GenAI wave — and maybe even ride it?
The Media Copilot is a podcast and newsletter that explores how generative AI is changing media, journalism, and the news.

⁠⁠Subscribe to the newsletter.⁠⁠

⁠⁠Follow on X.⁠⁠

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Music: ⁠⁠Favorite⁠⁠ by Alexander Nakarada, licensed under Creative Commons BY Attribution 4.0 License

© AnyWho Media 2023
52 min
November 03, 2023Teaching AI to the Next Generation of Journalists, with Thomas Seymat
Perhaps the people best positioned to thrive in tomorrow’s media ecosystem are today’s journalism students. Learning how generative AI can assist in their work while also learning the fundamentals of the trade means the next generation of reporters will have machines assisting their work from the start.
Helping guide this vanguard of robot-enhanced journalists is Thomas Seymat. Thomas is the Editorial Projects and Development Manager for Euronews, and he also teaches at the Journalist Training Center in France, one of the oldest journalism schools in Europe. This fall he’s leading a class on the use of GenAI in reporting, coaching them on how ChatGPT, Midjourney and other tools can make them stronger, more efficient reporters while also establishing where the guardrails are on their use.
Our conversation was illuminating — and somewhat reassuring — about the future of journalism and the next generation. Thomas revealed how his students are already using these tools, their thoughts on the ethics of AI, and some “road to Damascus” moments in their journey.
On the news brief, John Biggs and I discuss why labeling content as “AI assisted” is practically useless, whether or not Apple’s new AI-ready Macs mean anything, and that the White House executive order on AI might actually be pretty good? That’s up first.
Information on the AI class John and I are teaching is here. More to come on that soon.

This week's top AI stories for media:

The White House executive order on AI
Is it misguided?

Or actually pretty good?

Our take on what it means for media

Labeling won't solve AI's problems (Axios)

IAC warns regulators generative AI could wreck the web (Axios)

Apple mentions AI, finally (CNN)

The Media Copilot is a podcast and newsletter that explores how generative AI is changing media, journalism, and the news.

⁠Subscribe to the newsletter.⁠

⁠Follow on X.⁠

Subscribe to the podcast on:
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Music: ⁠Favorite⁠ by Alexander Nakarada, licensed under Creative Commons BY Attribution 4.0 License

© AnyWho Media 2023
1 hr 3 min
October 31, 2023How AI Can Customize Your News, with Jeremy Caplan
The Media Copilot is a weekly discussion about generative AI and how it's changing media, journalism, and the news. After a news briefing where journalists Pete Pachal and John Biggs discuss the most recent AI headlines relevant to the media, we present a conversation with a new person every week — innovators, media executives, and fascinating people with compelling perspectives on AI.
For this week's conversation, we welcome Jeremy Caplan, author of the newsletter Wonder Tools and Director of Teaching and Learning at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY. We spoke to Jeremy about not just the tools journalists can use to begin using generative AI in their day-to-day, but also the mentality needed to get the most out of this unprecedented moment in media.
If you watch the video version of the podcast, you may notice Jeremy’s video was slightly out of sync with his audio. We tried to fix this in post and failed, but rest assured Jeremy talks just like a normal human when he has a better internet connection.
Here are the stories from the news briefing:
Nightshade "Poisons" AI models by altering metadata on images (Ars Technica)
Twelve Labs shows off AI that can "watch" and interpret videos (The Neuron)
An AI designed to clean up Wikipedia citations (Nature)
Anthropic is crowd-sourcing an "AI constitution" (Axios)
The Media Copilot is a podcast and newsletter that explores how generative AI is changing media, journalism, and the news.

⁠Subscribe to the newsletter.⁠

⁠Follow on X.⁠

Subscribe to the podcast on:
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Music: ⁠Favorite⁠ by Alexander Nakarada, licensed under Creative Commons BY Attribution 4.0 License

© AnyWho Media 2023
1 hr 6 min
October 27, 2023The Ethics of DALL-E, with Harry McCracken
The ethics of generative AI are more complicated than they might seem. Take generative images, like the ones created by DALL-E and Midjourney. Even when legal issues like the licensing of training imagery are addressed (as Adobe Firefly seems to), does that mean it's OK to create an image in the style of a well-known illustrator without their knowledge or approval? And does the prolific use of GenAI images cheapen the entire practice of photo illustration?
That was one of many topics I talked about this week with Harry McCracken, Global Technology Editor for Fast Company, and a key member of the publication's internal team exploring generative AI. Harry has been covering tech since the dawn of the internet and has had a front-row seat every innovation in tech since then. Over the past several months he's plunged deep into AI, and the topic features regularly in his newsletter, Plugged In, such as this recent piece on the dawn of "self-aware" software.
Harry is also the first guest in what will become a regular feature on The Media Copilot: Friday Conversations, where I chat with journalists, media executives, and interesting people doing interesting things with generative AI and the news. This first conversation is free for everybody, but I plan to make these conversations exclusive to paid subscribers starting next week. If you don’t want to miss any, it might be a good idea to take advantage of that subscribe button below 👇
I hope you find the conversation as stimulating as I did. Look for more insights from fascinating people working at the intersection of media and GenAI in the coming weeks.

The Media Copilot is a podcast and newsletter that explores how generative AI is changing media, journalism, and the news.

⁠Subscribe to the newsletter.⁠

⁠Follow on X.⁠

Subscribe to the podcast on:
⁠Apple⁠

⁠Spotify⁠

Music: ⁠Favorite⁠ by Alexander Nakarada, licensed under Creative Commons BY Attribution 4.0 License

© AnyWho Media 2023
44 min