Smart News Analyzer: artificial intelligence enters the newsroom

It is called Smart News Analyzer (SNA), the AI Agent of the newsroom of the future. Using Artificial Intelligence, it can convert any informational content, such as audio or video, into text, process it, classify it by topic, and identify key moments of particular interest to each user.

SNA was born from the collaboration between Aygloo, the Spanish company of Mashfrog Group specializing in the comprehensive application of Generative AI (GenAI) and Explainable AI (XAI), and the historic Iberian news agency Europa Press.

Smart News Analyzer employs five artificial intelligence techniques (NLP, Graph Theory, STS, NLG, and XAI), applying them to the audio and video content that reaches the newsroom daily in the form of interviews, press conferences, and brief statements. It processes each piece of content through automated analysis, extracting relevant information.

Thanks to AI, SNA shortens reaction times, offering Europa Press journalists near real-time transcriptions of audio, highlight clips based on the user’s predefined interests, and two types of summaries: extractive and abstractive, in line with linguistic model terminology. All of this is carried out through a massive online process distributed on iCloud.

Manuel Pardo, Innovation Director at Europa Press, emphasizes that "one of the aspects we have focused on the most is explainability, and to achieve this, we have had strong support and leadership from the AI company Aygloo. Aware of the importance of shedding light on the 'black box' that these models represent, especially in the field of journalistic information, the project has also aimed to equip the tool with an explainability module that provides journalists with insights into potential biases in AI-based decisions".

The Europa Press project was carried out with financial support from CDTI Innovación, the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation, and Universities’ innovation financing agency, and co-financing from ERDF funds.

Ignacio Gutiérrez, CEO of Aygloo, states: "We are proud to have participated in this exciting project, where we developed the summarization and explainability modules. These are two highly complex technical aspects, and guiding their development required experts with a high level of technological expertise”.

"In recent years, we have gained extensive experience in developing interactive interfaces and other applications that support multiple formats and data models, significantly enhancing their applicability and versatility across different contexts," says Ignacio Gutiérrez. "We aim to remain highly competitive in AI technologies and will continue dedicating 40% of our resources to research and development. We want to strengthen our presence in the Spanish and Italian markets while expanding operations to other European Union countries, reinforcing our strategic position in sectors such as finance, healthcare, media, distribution, and manufacturing".