The BBC announced it will be adding new Gen AI tools to its news room, to summarise news stories and improve readability for users.
The broadcaster will let journalists create new “‘At a glance’ summaries” of longer news pieces using Gen AI, making news more accessible to audiences. The shorter, bullet-point summary of a story will appear in a box within selected articles.
Bite-sized content, the BBC says, is increasingly favourable among news readers, especially younger audiences.
To generate the summary, BBC journalists give the AI a single approved prompt. The summary is continuously reviewed and edited before and after publication to ensure editorial standards are met.
The company will also disclose when and where AI has been used to uphold transparency.
“BBC Style Assist” is an AI system that can read thousands of BBC articles to understand its house style, and match AI-generated content to align with this.
The BBC said it receives numerous local news stories from the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS). However, with the rate at which these stories are received, not all can be formatted into BBC style and then published.
BBC Style Assist takes a submitted story and generates a new story draft in the BBC’s style. The draft is reviewed by a journalist before it is published online.
The tool utilises a Large Language Model (LLM), which contains the knowledge of thousands of BBC articles, and reformats the submissions into a story that fits the company’s tone.
The broadcaster plans to publicly test the pilots of the tools, and will assess whether they should be more widely released.
AI Article Generation
More publishers are trying to take advantage of AI technology to increase news engagement. With the rise of social media news consumption, making traditional news sites more digestible could attract more readers.
The Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2025 revealed that some audiences support the use of AI in news content. The report found that 27 percent of respondents were in favour of AI use for summarisation, 24 percent for translation, and 21 percent for better recommendations.
The BBC News App’s AI-driven notifications attract nearly half (46 percent) of recipients to view their content.
In comparison to previous results, more audiences expect AI to make the news production process cheaper (+29 net score). With that, many remained concerned about the accuracy of AI-assisted news content. The majority of audiences prefer human input.
In the UK, only 11 percent of people felt comfortable with news “being produced mostly by AI with some human oversight.”
In addition to the tools, the BBC updated their published “Our approach to AI” and “What we’re doing with AI”.
“At the BBC, we’re exploring how AI can help us serve our audiences better and provide more value for the license fee.” the media company states. “We’re discovering how AI can help staff do their jobs better and more efficiently, as well extend our much-loved services and improve digital experiences.”
These developments take place against the backdrop of tensions between news outlets and AI companies.
The BBC recently accused AI firm Perplexity AI of taking their content without permission. This act, the company said, was an example of copyright infringement and a violation of their terms of use.
