Using AI as a newsroom tool is no longer a suggestion, but an expectation, at Politico and Business Insider parent company Axel Springer after an all-hands meeting at Europe’s largest publishing company led by CEO Mathias Döpfner, according to a Wednesday report by the newsletter Status.
“I tell you, what is happening at the moment with regard to technology is the biggest change in modern civilization,” Döpfner said, according to Status editor Oliver Darcy, who reviewed an unlisted YouTube video of the Wednesday global meeting. “The first wave of internet is nothing against these developments.”
Streamed company-wide from a stage at Axel Springer’s Berlin headquarters, the “impassioned and urgent message” lasted nearly an hour. Döpfner covered several topics, but AI was the central theme, including his own experiences using the tool to create whole-cloth memos and presentations.
“It’s really like a new beginning,” he said. “A new era.”
Döpfner made it clear that every employee in every department was to expected to embrace the technology
“Nobody in the company has to explain in the company why she or he is using AI to do something — whether to prepare a presentation or analyze a document,” he said. “You only have to explain if you didn’t use AI. That’s really something you have to explain because that shouldn’t happen.”
Döpfner did not give specific guidelines or policy, but suggested it could be used in certain editorial endeavors.
“Of course, every mistake should be avoided and the credibility and truthfulness of our reporting is the most important thing,” he said, adding that AI-caused mistakes are inevitable but necessary to begin implementing the new tech. “If we make a mistake we have to apologize.”
He did note that avoiding mistakes like language-model “hallucinations” is the responsibility of the user.
“You use AI how much you want but you also take the responsibility that you double- and triple-check that it’s true,” he said. “If you made a mistake with the AI it’s the same as if you would had done it without AI”
As for disclosing AI use as a research and writing tool in articles, Döpfner said it would be not be necessary any more than when one uses Google to look up information.
“We would never say this article was made with the help of AI,” he said. “We always use all sources of information, and in the future more and more AI.”
Döpfner relayed how after attending the Sun Valley conference, he recorded a voice memo about his meetings and ran it through ChatGPT to create a summary for his executives.
“It was the most perfect document I’ve ever sent,” the media head said, admitting that he relies on the OpenAI model for everything from analysis to writing op-eds. He said the tech is already disrupting the publishing business, noting how direct traffic across Axel Springer properties dropped significantly after Google began generating its own news summaries with AI.
“It’s a little hint of what can happen and will happen with artificial intelligence,” he said. “Everything is going to be disrupted.”
