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...
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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...
Nerding Out at Medientage München: AI, Infrastructure Books, and Media Futures
If you're going to discuss AI, liquid content, synthetic content, it's best to do so surrounded by large, physical artworks. The House of Communication did not disappoint. My takeaways from Medientage München: An overview of the future of search by Jacqueline Hoffmann, with numerous links to new AI search engines (perhaps I'm flattered to be...
What does the future of media look like with artificial intelligence?
For DER SPIEGEL's birthday, I was asked about my perspective on the future. I wrote 30 observations. The article is in German, but here are some of them abbreviated: The year is 2022. A Google developer goes public. His company is developing a chatbot that he believes has become conscious. At Google, they laugh at...
Confessions: I Showed School Kids How to Hide AI Use
I revealed to school kids how to edit AI-generated images so they can't be detected as such. And I may have let slip a few tricks on how to make ChatGPT your ghostwriter without setting off alarms. Why? Because students aren't stupid, and we discussed methods for detecting AI content during Hamburg's Press Freedom Week...
