Britain's largest public broadcaster, BBC, is planning to develop its own artificial intelligence (AI) and is reportedly in talks with big tech companies such as Amazon for content supply agreements, according to major foreign media on the 21st (local time).
According to sources cited by foreign media, BBC plans to develop a generative AI model capable of quickly producing news-related text, audio, code, and more, for use by its in-house journalists. It has also been negotiating with big tech companies, including Amazon, to allow the use of its content for training general-purpose AI models used in application development.
For BBC, which receives very little advertising from private companies, such licensing agreements with private firms are expected to bring significant revenue. Recently, media groups including Axel Springer and Le Monde have also entered the AI market by signing multi-million dollar content supply contracts with OpenAI.
Foreign media evaluated that since BBC advocates political neutrality, its data could be useful in training unbiased AI models. However, they pointed out a limitation in that most BBC content is already freely distributed online due to its public broadcasting nature.
The talks between BBC and big tech ahead of BBC's business plan announcement scheduled for next week carry significant implications. In this announcement, BBC is expected to reveal commercial strategies aimed at reducing dependence on the national license fee and diversifying revenue streams.
Roddy Davies, BBC's national director, mentioned the in-house AI development plan at a House of Commons committee, stating, "We are reviewing whether to carry this out through partnerships or independently." He also said, "BBC holds nearly 80 years of audio and video archives and vast text archives online," adding, "We are actively considering any options that benefit the BBC."
Meanwhile, it has been revealed that BBC is already conducting experiments using AI in its newsroom. However, foreign media reported that guidelines are being established so that final decisions on AI-recommended article headlines are made directly by editors or journalists.
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