AI reshapes broadcast, but humans stay central

Senior leaders from Australia’s ABC and Olympic Broadcasting Services (OBS) outlined how AI is reshaping every editorial and operational workflow while insisting that human judgement remains central. 

Speaking in ‘Tech Leader Perspectives – how AI is reshaping the business of media’ at the IBC Conference yesterday, Damian Cronan, Chief Digital Information Officer, ABC, said: “Trust in us as an institution is central to our relationship with the Australian public. We are leaning into AI but slowly. It’s a carefully considered, calibrated approach.” 

ABC has spent the past year building an AI governance framework and rolling out Claude to more than 5,000 staff, supported by training and an internal model tuned to ABC editorial values. AI is already powering automatic transcription, improved online discoverability and the broadcaster’s vast AI‑powered archive, which surfaces half a million hours of video and 400,000 hours of audio. 

Cronan said AI is also giving traditional radio bulletins a “second digital life,” generating online versions while keeping human journalists at the centre. “We’re not about replacing humans. Human origination is the differentiator. If everyone’s just generating content from AI, what makes you unique?” added Cronan. 

While ABC focuses on trust and augmentation, OBS is using AI to meet the extreme scale and speed of Olympic production. CTO Sotiris Salamouris said Paris 2024 required 11,000 hours of content in two weeks, with Milano Cortina set to exceed 6,500 hours. “AI is now critical to handling that volume,” he said. 

OBS uses AI to automatically compile highlights – “top ten actions of a match or best moments of an athlete,” noted Salamouris – and deploys computer‑vision systems to analyse performance in real time, including jump height and landing speed in figure skating. 

It has built AutoNarrate, a generative‑AI tool that watches live feeds and produces instant summaries. “You can follow multiple transmissions without watching the whole match,” Salamouris said. 

OBS has worked with AI since 2018 and now runs around 50 projects, guided by a framework of ‘Enablement, Engagement and Efficiency’. “AI helps us do things we couldn’t do before – explain sports better, engage audiences more, and make workflows more efficient,” Salamouris said.