Sweden’s largest daily newspaper Aftonbladet has tested news articles “wrapped” by an AI service following a proposal by the Youth Commission.
Afton Braidette’s deputy editor-in-chief Martin Shouri said the paper was “controversial” for creating news content that appealed to younger audiences, despite what he called a “rather disgusting” result. said he wanted.
Last fall, Aftonbladet’s parent company, Sibsted, and the non-profit foundation Tinius Trust, which manages it, launched a joint venture with the aim of “understanding the challenges traditional media face in reaching an increasingly news-averse demographic.” “We recruited young people from urban areas outside Stockholm.”
A group of 10 people tasked with developing product ideas that “ensure more young people trust editorial media” suggested music articles as one approach.
Aftonbladet tested the idea on its website last week with about 1,000 users under the age of 36. The paper’s staff selected a series of articles and fed them into an AI service tasked with summarizing them as songs.
The newspaper offered young consumers two “news as music” options. Stories can be experienced as raps or as “summary news texts rhythmically matched to AI-generated music that enhances the experience.” About half of the test users chose to listen to both formats, according to the paper.
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The most popular of the resulting articles covers Beyoncé’s Renaissance tour arriving in Sweden, which can be viewed at the end of this article or via this link. (The article is written in Swedish, but the lyrics in the video are in English.)
“It was a natural fit for Aftonbladet to provide the resources to execute the project and test the idea,” the paper said.
Of course, the publisher does not, and does not plan to, offer a service to wrap articles on its website. But the company says it is incorporating AI into its normal workflow for video captioning and interview transcription, and is currently developing other tools to “make the job of journalists easier.”
Last month, Aftonbraidet was tasked with coordinating the paper’s AI implementation and appointed editorial video chief Andreas Landmark as “AI general.”
Deputy Editor Martin Shouri told the Press Gazette:
“We do this because the media industry needs serious challenges. Every survey shows that young people love the news, but they don’t like the way we present it. .”
“‘News as Music’ is an example of how things could be in the future,” said Shori. It is clear that we need to challenge ourselves and listen to future news consumers.”
A qualitative study by the Reuters Institute released in October found that not only are young people more interested in news than their elders, but they are exposed to news through a variety of brands and formats, often through social media. suggested that it is likely.
“It’s not impossible to do more experimentation,” Shouri said. But I don’t necessarily think this service is the future. I wanted to provoke a debate about whether there is a
Juman, one of the original 10 panelists, said, “I like both rap and AI rhythm stories depending on my mood.” The instrumental part added a sense of news and was a good feeling. I loved the rap because it made the news experience fun. ”
Aftonbladet isn’t the first to combine news and music. In 2017, the journalistic group Climate Symphony tried to convert climate data into audio as “a new way to express the climate change issue,” co-founder Lia Borromeo told Wired.
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