Uli Köppen: How Bavarian Broadcasting is preparing for an AI-mediated future where trusted content wins

About this episode

Uli Köppen discusses the challenges and strategies of implementing AI in public broadcasting while maintaining trust.

Most major newsrooms have now moved beyond early experimentation with AI. The main challenge now is determining how to govern effectively, scale consistently, and strategically position AI across the entire organization—while maintaining public trust as a central priority. This week on Newsroom Robots, host Nikita Roy sits down with Uli Köppen, Chief AI Officer at Bavarian Broadcasting (BR), to talk about what it really looks like to lead AI strategy inside one of Europe’s largest public broadcasting networks. Uli makes a compelling case for why every newsroom should establish a dedicated AI leadership function, backed by an interdisciplinary governance structure. They also dig into a question defining the next phase of AI strategy for many newsrooms: in a world of AI overviews, zero-click search, and agent-driven information retrieval, how do you maintain your brand as a recognizable, trustworthy source? Uli shares why BR opted out of AI crawling and what they are building instead, including a vision for a verified content data pool that could power new products across multiple media organizations. In this episode, they cover: 02:09 — What it means to be Chief AI Officer at a…

People in this episode

Host: Nikita Roy

Guest: Uli Köppen

Topics covered

• AI strategy
• public broadcasting
• newsroom governance
• trust in media
• interdisciplinary leadership

Keywords

• AI
• newsroom
• public broadcasting
• trustworthy content
• governance
• interdisciplinary board
• media organizations

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Bavarian Broadcasting

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