Anthropic is releasing Claude 4, Karen Hao’s book “Empire of AI” is out, and Google’s showing off the future of search at I/O.Claude 4? Are you kidding?"I understand the surprise! Yes, this is Claude Sonnet 4 from the Claude 4 model family." My first attempts to send Claude 4 on research tasks with extended reasoning...
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It’s crazy what you can build with AI in 1.5 days
Do you want to have a chat with the host of your favorite podcast? Generate a trailer based on emotionally engaging scenes from a movie? Give AI your video material and get a first cut in Premiere, complete with voice-over? How about checking claims made in a video stream in real time? Crazy. That's my...
What would we build today?
What would we build today for people who need trusted, verified information, knowing nothing about newsrooms? That was Nikita Roy's question at the Nordic AI in Media Summit in Copenhagen, hashtag#NAMS25. Rethinking journalism from first principles. One of the many puzzle pieces came from Helsingin Sanomat editor-in-chief Erja Yläjärvi: "Writing is not a core skill...
AI is a Cult, They Want to Create God and Kill Journalism
That's the narrative. It goes like this: There's a group of powerful people in Silicon Valley who believe in effective altruism, want to live forever, and might be susceptible to fascism. They're not only building AI but believe in a super-intelligence that will have no bias and all the answers. So why not get rid...
Cautiously Optimistic AI Reckoning: Come See Our Talk at re:publica 25
Clare Spencer and I are heading to Berlin to talk about – waves hands dramatically – all of this. Journalism, AI, and whatever else feels relevant in this moment. We named our session AI in Media: What Could Possibly Go Wrong? and pitched this to re:publica: "Two industry insiders take you behind the scenes to...
Sessions on Journalism and AI at the International Journalism Festival 2025 in Perugia
The festival is just around the corner, and here’s my annotated list of sessions focusing on AI and journalism that I plan to attend – and where you’ll likely find me. The session on the ideology behind AI (Captured). Thursday, 11:30 - 12:20, Auditorium San Francesco al Prato. With Natalia Antelava, Coda Story, Isobel Cockerell,...
Vibecoding at Frankfurt AI Forum
With the help of Claude, I vibecoded an interactive summary function into existence. At Frankfurt AI Forum, the newest event of the WAN-IFRA, the World Association of News Publishers, Financial Times' Liz Lohn talked about their successful AI summaries and how they give users the impression of realtime generation. I jumped at the opportunity to...
AI & Journalism Podcasts That Don’t Suck (I Promise)
Here are my artificial intelligence and journalism podcast recommendations, based on actual listening. Explained: The conspiracy to make AI seem harder than it is! by Spotify's Gustav Söderström. For anyone looking for a good introduction — not a series, no storytelling, just 1.5 hours of solid explanation: This is the podcast you want. It's from...
No Permission, no pay: How my Book became AI training fodder
I was at the Leipziger Buchmesse (Leipzig Book Fair) to talk about AI. First off: I was robbed. Supposedly, Meta (and probably others) trained its AI using LibGen, a shadow library with millions of books and articles. A book that Christian Stoecker, Konrad Lischka and I wrote 13 years ago is part of the LibGen...
Teach AI your face in a few clicks: A beginner’s guide to finetuning FLUX
Low-Rank Adaptation, LoRA, allows for fine-tuning without the need to retrain the entire model. You can teach FLUX a specific style or a specific aesthetic, even a face. A while back, there was a big trend of uploading a dozen photos to some shady app, maybe paying a few euros, and getting a set of...
“Liberal AI Grok Attacks Trump, Turns on Creator Musk in Shocking Betrayal”
What happens when you cram all the world's knowledge, or at least what you can find, into a machine? The machine gets a sense of what's considered normal. I know, loaded term. Let's call it a baseline. This even applies to Elon Musk's supposed super AI, Grok 3. "Should a U.S. president say 'He who...
Put AI at the beginning, not at the end
(This is my contribution to Nieman Lab's Predictions for Journalism, 2025) Many newsrooms and publishers are looking for ways to use generative AI, and they’re making one crucial mistake: They’re hoping for the one magic button. They’re hoping for AI that can quickly turn an article into a podcast, web story, or newsletter. For AI...
Twitter’s a Dumpster Fire, So Why Is It So Hard to Leave?
Just like Bitcoin, Bluesky is having a moment right now. But for the opposite reason. After Elon Musk and Trump won the US election, the classic "Why You Should Really, Truly, Absolutely Quit Twitter This Time" posts are making the rounds again. But here I am, still hesitating to hit that "Deactivate Account" button.Not because...
Why would a brand known for quality journalism even consider getting close to generative AI?
I was invited to speak at Otto Group’s internal conference Discover AI 3.0 and tried to give some answers. And I petted a Spot robot from Boston Dynamics and I'm somehow still alive! Before it was my turn, there was plenty to hear about AI in general, thanks to Philipp Klöckner, about AI in logistics,...
AI as Sidekick, Not Saboteur: My Takeaways from ADC Digital Conference 2024
Together with Christina von Messling from the Future Today Strategy Group, I had the privilege to kick things off at the ADC Digital Conference 2024. Picture over 1,000 attendees, 50 speakers, and a backstage pass to the world of design and creative agencies (whose work I usually experience as a consumer). Among the many highlights...
