Welcome to The Signal, hosted by Fergus Bell and Tom Trewinnard. Fergus and Tom are in Marseille at the World News Congress and in this episode they talk to Olalla Maria Novoa Ojea, the Head of AI at Prisa Media, the world's largest Spanish and Portuguese-language media and entertainment group.
Olalla is a working journalist, not a tech evangelist, who's spent her career inside the machine. She started as a Fulbright-funded Wall Street correspondent in the US before coordinating editions for the Wall Street Journal, then ran breaking news and digital innovation at El Mundo back in Spain. Now at Prisa Media, her standout project is Victoria - a synthetic voice built from scratch, dubbed “The Voice of Soccer”. She also led VerificAudio, an experimental Spanish-language audio deepfake detection tool for journalists. Olalla knows all about practical AI, applied editorially.
Fergus and Tom talk to her about the shift from newsrooms to AI, the conversational experience of Voice products and chatbots like Alexa or Siri, the AI world before ChatGPT. They discuss using LLMs for rigorous work, the protection of “super-valuable” intellectual property, why it’s important to read the fine print, plus what is “shadow IT” and why are some people using AI in secret?
If you want to understand how the news is being created and distributed, how AI is - and can be - used in newsrooms, insights from media leaders and practical thinking on the future of journalism - as well as honest conversations about what’s working, and what isn’t - then subscribe and follow to stay close to The Signal.
Fergus and Tom will be here every week. Find The Signal on YouTube, Spotify, Apple and wherever you get your podcasts.
Produced by Rob Fitzpatrick
Edited by James Bullock
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