The Media Copilot podcast is evolving. As of today, I’m mixing up the format, adding a news briefing at the beginning. For that briefing I’m joined by fellow tech journalist John Biggs, a builder of many AI tools himself, including Typewriter Plus.
Why am I adding a news briefing to the podcast? The fact is there are many news stories about generative AI that are relevant to the media that I don’t comment on, but it’s not because I don’t want to. There is simply (and ironically for a newsletter about AI), not enough human attention to go around to create discrete posts for each. However, the podcast format provides more flexibility to go over several subjects, and it’s a natural format for commentary. You can go deeper on all the stories in the notes below.
The conversation is still the centerpiece, though, and this week I’m delighted to welcome Jeremy Caplan, author of the newsletter Wonder Tools and Director of Teaching and Learning at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY. I was excited to talk to Jeremy about not just the tools journalists can use to begin using generative AI in their day-to-day, but also the mentality needed to get the most out of this unprecedented moment in media.
Other upgrades to the podcast: It’s now in the Apple Podcasts app and on Spotify, opening it up to a much wider audience. It’ll soon be on many more services, so if it’s not on your favorite yet, it will be soon. And for those who like to see what they’re hearing, there’s a YouTube channel as well. Like, subscribe, sign up for notifications, and tattoo the logo on your shoulder (if there’s no button for that, I’m sure there soon will be).
For those viewing on YouTube, you’ll notice Jeremy’s video was slightly out of sync with his audio. We tried to fix this in post and failed, but rest assured Jeremy talks just like a normal human when he has a better internet connection.
I hope you enojoy the new format, but even if you don’t I’d appreciate any feedback. Feel free to leave a comment or email at pete@petepachal.com.
AI+Media News Briefing
Nightshade "Poisons" AI models by altering metadata on images (Ars Technica)
Twelve Labs shows off AI that can "watch" and interpret videos (The Neuron)
An AI designed to clean up Wikipedia citations (Nature)
Anthropic is crowd-sourcing an "AI constitution" (Axios)
In Conversation: Jeremy Caplan on Customizing the News With AI