The BBC announced on June 27th that it will begin public trials of two generative AI tools designed to assist its news production workflow. These pilots, revealed by Rhodri Talfan Davies, the BBC’s executive sponsor for generative AI, will concentrate on creating “at a glance” summaries and a style-assist formatting tool.
For the past 18 months, the BBC has conducted internal testing to assess how generative AI can improve production processes. This new public phase will evaluate the effectiveness of AI-generated bullet-point summaries in helping readers quickly understand longer articles, and whether an AI-powered style assistant can accelerate the reformatting of partner content to conform to BBC house style.
In the “at a glance” pilot, journalists will utilize a single approved prompt to generate concise summaries of selected news stories. Crucially, they will review and edit all output before publication, maintaining editorial control and transparency regarding AI usage. Short bullet-point summaries have proven popular among younger audiences, providing a rapid way to grasp complex stories.
The Style Assist pilot will employ a BBC-trained large language model to reformat reports from the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS). The LDRS, jointly funded by the BBC and provided by local news organizations, delivers daily local news coverage. By automating house-style editing, the BBC aims to increase the number of LDRS stories it publishes without increasing production time.
The Style Assist workflow involves submitting a report to the BBC’s content system, where it is reformatted by the AI model before review by a senior journalist for accuracy and clarity. No content is published without human approval, and any AI assistance will be disclosed to the audience as part of the BBC’s commitment to transparency. Initial testing will involve newsroom teams in BBC Wales and the east of England, who will provide feedback and data on the production benefits. The BBC will carefully evaluate each tool’s performance, identify weaknesses, and determine whether to expand the pilots.