Article published in goethe.de
Finland’s national public broadcaster, Yle, is using artificial intelligence to improve news personalization for its readers. The company has created a dual system called Voitto. The system functions as a journalist bot, producing around 100 articles and 250 visualizations each week, and as an intelligent news assistant, part of Yle’s personalized news app, NewsWatch.
Voitto, the news assistant, sits on the home screen of a mobile device and recommends interesting news content to users through notifications. It uses machine learning to improve its recommendations, learning from the user's reading history, their interactions on the home screen, and from live feedback.
“Voitto’s look, tone of voice and the algorithms that power it are all guided by Yle’s journalistic values and mission,” he says. Jarno Koponen, head of AI and Personalization at Yle News Lab.
According to Koponen, Voitto offers an affordable way to understand how those in power actually use their power. For example, it creates newsletters for all 200 Finnish MPs and explains how democracy and parliament work. The system also ensures that users receive news that is truly relevant to them, while also encouraging them to broaden their perspectives. For example, by offering two stories on the same topic from completely different perspectives.