DAILY SUNDAY 14 SEPTEMBER 2025 09:30-18:00 AI’S BOOST TO BROADCAST BY MONICA HECK
How AI is supercharging the M&E industry was the theme of Damian Cronan’s IBC Conference keynote yesterday. The Chief Digital Information Offi cer at Australian public service broadcaster ABC, shared how ABC Assist, an AI tool designed to put vast amounts of information and archive footage at the disposal of journalists, both from published and unpublished content, was having a positive impact for journalists and audiences. “We are a source of trusted news and entertainment and we wanted to lean into AI while ensuring we drive our investment to positive intent, both servicing our audience and our journalists, allowing them to be more effi cient and impactful in their daily job,” he said. A large producer of linear content, with more than 65 radio stations, six channels and 14 markets, ABC is sitting on hundreds of thousands of hours of content and is producing material around the clock that is hard to navigate. “We thought we could apply AI against the breadth of our content to create a research tool for high volume tasks,” said Cronan. “It’s not enough for AI to summarise data, we wanted citations and actual references to core sources.
DISTRIBUTION SPONSOR
THE OFFICIAL NEWSPAPER FROM IBC
INSIDE Whole lotta doc
Bringing the original sound of Led Zeppelin thundering back to life Page 03
Damian Cronan, CDIO at ABC
We trained AI around timecode so it will take you to the specifi c reference that is most relevant to the question you asked.” ABC uses Google Gemini
to process, read, interpret and understand the vast archive of assets it holds by law, and to produce tags, metadata and embeddings. The output is stored in a Vector store that acts as a search index. A large language model (LLM) then assists to achieve alignment. “We wanted an LLM that
would respond to us with our own editorial standards, tone, choice of language and integrity,” he added. “We had to make sure the
model was deeply grounded. It has been effective in answering and responding to questions to the same standard or better than an average ABC journalist.” Two months into this project feedback is mostly positive, with journalists commending the use of natural language in a search over trying to fi nd the right terminology. In addition, one-third of surveyed journalists found content that otherwise would not have surfaced. Having tested it internally with
great success, Cronan is turning his attention to audience-facing use cases. “How do we repurpose content and report localised news based on our radio output?”
Fighting disinformation The battle against fake news continues but there are no easy wins Page 04
Maintaining trust The EBU’s Noel Curran on how public service broadcasters are competing against internet opinion Page 06
Natural talent Jeff Wilson reveals the tech that enabled him to capture previously unseen wildlife footage Page 08
Transformative times IABM CEO Saleha Williams shares how the association is changing the way it services members
Exhibitor news Discover the latest products and solutions being launched at IBC2025 Page 34
To view the full IBC2025 Conference agenda, scan the QR code.
The IBC x Google Cloud Hackfest kicked off in Hall 14 yesterday with developers, creatives and media technologists competing in a sprint to prototype new AI-powered broadcast solutions. Participants are working alongside experts from Google Cloud and using content from Formula E to develop real live sports use cases. Winners will be announced today.
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72
