BBC launches public examination of two generation AI news workflow tools – NCS

On June 27, the BBC announced that it will begin public testing of two generation AI tools designed to support news production workflows.

The pilot was announced on June 27 by Rhodri Talfan Davies, executive sponsor of BBC Generator AI, and will focus on “at a glance” overview and style assist formatting tools.

For the past 18 months, companies have been conducting internal testing to assess how generator AI can help with the production process. The new public phase will assess whether AI-generated bullet summaries will help readers grasp the key points of longer articles, and whether AI-powered style assistants can speed up reformatting partner content to BBC House style.

For “at a glance” pilots, journalists use a single approved prompt to generate a short, scannable summary of selected news articles. Review and edit all output before publishing to ensure editing control and transparency regarding AI usage. A short bullet summary has proven popular among younger audiences as an easy way to understand complex stories.

Style Assist Pilots apply a large BBC-trained language model to reformat reports from the local Democracy Reporting Services (LDRS).

Funded by the BBC and provided by the local press, the LDR provides daily local profit reports. By automating House-style editing, the BBC aims to increase the number of LDRS stories that can be published without extending production times.

Under Style Assist Workflow, trustworthy reports are submitted to the BBC's content system and reformatted by the AI ​​model, followed by senior journalists for review of accuracy and clarity. Nothing will be made public without human approval, and as part of the BBC's commitment to transparency, AI support will be disclosed to audiences.

In the first phase, the BBC Wales newsroom team and the Eastern England newsroom team will test style assist and provide feedback and data on production benefits. The BBC measures the performance of each tool, identifies shortcomings, and determines whether to scale the pilot.