Soon, most of the entities accessing your journalism won’t be people—they’ll be AI agents acting on someone’s behalf and they will never see your homepage. Newsrooms still treat AI as a tool for research, factchecking and production. But “tool” is the wrong word, and “in the loop” is already the wrong reassurance. AI is becoming the layer between media and audiences, shifting demand to the agent while production costs fall toward zero.

In his keynote, Ole Reissmann, Director of AI at SPIEGEL Group, explores what breaks structurally and how news organizations need to show up in the emerging agent layer.

Over the past two decades, platforms have fundamentally reshaped journalism: reach often outweighed relevance, algorithms competed with editorial judgement, and platform power challenged media independence. Now generative AI is driving the next transformation, changing how information is created, discovered and valued. What lessons has journalism learned from the platform era—and which warnings came too late? Do news organizations need smarter AI strategies, stronger regulation, or entirely new approaches to remain relevant and independent? 

This discussion explores how journalism can navigate technological change without losing its public mission.

IPPEN.MEDIA is not only one of Germany’s leading publishing houses, with a focus on local journalism and a portfolio of more than 80 brands including well-known titles such as the Frankfurter Rundschau and BuzzFeed. The company is also at the forefront when it comes to AI adoption.  

Markus Knall will explain how to publish 5,000 articles fully automatically on an election night without compromising on quality standards. And why this is worth doing for a local news outlet. He also shares his vision of a future, where “AI-generated” has become a quality label. 

Last but not least it’s about how all this affects roles and requirements for the staff – and how IPPEN.MEDIA is responding to this. 

This keynote is presented by GenKI4Media, a project dedicated to the development of generative AI assistants for the media, cultural, and creative sectors and funded by the Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space.

At a time of growing skepticism about the capabilities, influence, and societal impact of large language models, calling „AI-generated“ a quality label could certainly be seen as a bold claim. 

How can quality be ensured when the training of future AI models increasingly relies on AI-generated content? Some even argue that LLMs are not just an impasse for content creation, but a dead end in general. 

At the same time, reaching audiences has become much harder in the constant stream of information across fragmented platforms – and in times where search no longer leads to traffic, visibility has become a major challenge for media companies. So, what strategies are working? Where are the success stories, particularly in local journalism?  

What tools could AI realistically offer that don’t yet exist? And last but not least: What is the role of humans in the future of content creation? These are the questions this panel sets out to explore – always with a clear focus on practical applications in the day-to-day operations of media companies. 

The panel discussion is presented by GenKI4Media, a project dedicated to the development of generative AI assistants for the media, cultural, and creative sectors and funded by the Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space. 

16:30-16:50 | Enabling Non-experts to easily and affordably create 3D Spaces
Bringing invisible and inaccessible spaces to life? That’s what digital design experts ART+COM and broadcaster Deutsche Welle (DW) are working on; an AI-powered tool that turns text, photos, videos, or audio into usable, realistic and mostly correct 3D models of real-world spaces. At DW, the tool primarily supports the investigative team, where reporters often rely on witness testimonies but lack visual evidence of what occurred behind closed doors. The tool enables them to make complex stories more tangible for audiences. With an iterative workflow and consistent scene generation, it produces output for web, VR, or video. Beyond journalism, it opens up applications in areas like spatial prototyping and design, where spatial concepts can be explored before being physically built.

16:50-17:10 | How Well Does Generative AI Support Journalists and Media Professionals in Text Content Production?
Large Language Models are increasingly used for content generation tasks such as summaries, social media posts, and news adaptations. Yet an important question remains: How well do they support professional journalists in producing high-quality editorial content?
This talk presents insights from a real-world study on AI-assisted text production conducted with professional journalists integrated into their daily workflow. It examines how generative AI affects editorial efficiency, output quality, and the overall production process. Also, lessons learned from comparing different model families in a newsroom setting are shared.

17:10-17:30 | Your Compliance Problem is bigger than you think – and AI can help Media Organisations navigate it
Regulations are multiplying. Press codes, editorial guidelines, broadcasting regulations, and new EU media legislation – the rules journalists and editors must follow keep growing. But reviewing content for compliance is slow, expensive, and requires expertise most editors don’t have in-house. Together with Deutsche Welle and dpa, Condat built an AI assistant that takes on this challenge. It reviews journalistic content against regulatory frameworks, flags potential violations by severity, and explains what went wrong — including the chain of reasoning, in plain language so that editors can understand the AI’s decisions. Learnings about making AI genuinely useful in high-stakes editorial workflows will be demonstrated.

17:30-17:50 | Confabulation Score: Identifying generated Bullshit
People who are asked for their opinion but have no idea themselves sometimes spout nonsense to make themselves seem interesting or to avoid looking foolish. AI-based text generation starts to make things up when it reaches the limits of its knowledge. Measuring such confabulations – statements that are both false and arbitrary – helps determine the reliability of generated texts and to explore system limits.
The project GenKI4Media is funded by the Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space as part of the initiative “KI-Innovationswettbewerb – Generative KI für den Mittelstand”.

Artificial intelligence is rapidly transforming the media and creative industries—and with it, the demands placed on professionals. As AI increasingly takes over tasks in content creation, research, production, and administration, new job profiles are emerging at the intersection of creativity, technology, and strategic management.
The results of the 2026 Media Barometer, published this year by medianet berlinbrandenburg, show that 85 percent of companies expect a significant increase in demands related to AI applications over the next three years. At the same time, many companies are planning staff reductions, particularly in editorial and content creation, while open positions often remain unfilled.
What does this mean for employees in the industry? Which tasks will be automated in the future, which skills will become more valuable, and what new roles will emerge? How can companies equip their employees to navigate this transformation? And how must universities and training institutions adapt their curricula so that graduates are prepared for an AI-driven workplace?
The panel will discuss how the world of work in the media and creative industries is changing, what risks and opportunities this entails, and how business, education, and politics can work together to develop the skilled workers of tomorrow.

While the first panel discussed the future of skills, training, and employment in the media and creative industries, this panel focuses on real-world applications. How are companies already integrating AI into their workflows today? Which tasks have been automated, and which new roles have been created? How are teams, leadership structures, and career paths changing?
Drawing on specific best practices from media, technology, and creative companies, the panelists will discuss their experiences with AI implementation, which skills are in particularly high demand today, and how they are preparing their employees for this transformation. The focus will be on successful transformation processes, new job profiles, and the question of how companies can use AI productively without sacrificing creativity, innovation, and corporate culture.