Aftonbladet (Schibsted)
Aftonbladet adds ChatGPT article summaries and finds readers stay longer, but catches unexplained errors
Sweden's biggest daily, Aftonbladet, uses OpenAI's API to write short 'Snabbversion' summaries that readers can open inside articles. Its deputy editor told Press Gazette that readers spend longer on articles with summaries and that nearly 40% of younger readers opt in. Some errors also appeared, so humans check every summary.
Key figures
Copied exactly from the sources. Copy any figure with its citation.
Nearly 40%
Share of younger readers who choose to read the summaries1
under 30 seconds
Time to generate a summary, including the required human check1
What it took
Cost, team size and timeline were not disclosed in the sources.
The problem
Aftonbladet wanted to give readers more ways to take in a story than a long text, especially younger readers. Its deputy editor said summaries had not been offered before because writing them took too much time.
What they built
The newsroom built "Snabbversion", Swedish for quick version. It is a short summary of an article, written by a generative AI model, that readers can choose to open inside the article. It was rolled out across many news and sports articles. The summaries are made through OpenAI's API and plug into the newsroom's content management system.
How they did it
Aftonbladet began experimenting with ChatGPT at the start of 2023, with the aim of building a tool to test what generative AI could do. A task force with people from technology, product and its future lab team coordinates the experiments. Company policy says a human editor must check all AI-generated content before publication. Even with that check, the deputy editor said, producing a summary takes under 30 seconds.
Results
The deputy editor told Press Gazette that readers spend longer on articles that have a summary than on those without, a result that first looked like a mistake to the team. His explanation was that an overview up front makes readers more likely to read the full text. Nearly 40% of younger readers choose to read the summaries. Aftonbladet said it would use them as widely as possible that summer and might move to opt-out instead of opt-in if the numbers held.
What went wrong
Early accuracy was high enough that the team almost skipped the human check. Then mistakes began to appear that the publisher could not explain. The deputy editor said this showed the check is essential. The error was also hard internally, because not everyone in the newsroom welcomed generative AI.
Lessons for your project
Keep a human check on every AI output that reaches customers. Aftonbladet nearly dropped it after early accuracy, then saw errors it could not explain.
Start with an optional feature. Readers opt in to the summaries, and the newsroom said it might make them opt-out only if the numbers held.
Build the tool into the system staff already use. The summaries are integrated into the content management system.
Set a clear policy and train staff. Aftonbladet has a written rule that a human checks AI content, and runs workshops and training on the technology.
Caveats
- The figures come from Aftonbladet's deputy editor, as reported by Press Gazette. They are not audited and no sample sizes or time-on-page numbers are given.
- The article says readers spend longer on articles with summaries, but gives no figure for the increase.
- The summaries were described as still in a test phase in July 2023. The article does not give a go-live date, so the deployed date is the article date.
- The source says the summaries use the API of OpenAI, the owner of ChatGPT, and names no specific model version.
Sources
- How Sweden's biggest daily uses ChatGPT in its newsroom
Press Gazette · 2023-07-26 · News · pressgazette.co.uk
Summarized in our own words from the sources above. Spotted an error? See corrections.