One of the world leading global news agencies, AFP (Agence France-Presse), headquathered in Paris, announced in June, 2026 to launch MediaGen, an innovative project to develop trustworthy generative artificial intelligence tools for French and international media.
With a total budget of 4 million euros, the project will last 24 months and will develop three tools:
- Enhanced news monitoring: customisable tools capable of pulling together and analysing news from multiple sources (media, social networks, press releases) in real time to improve news gathering.
- Advanced multimodal search tools to explore and get value from text, photo, and video archives.
- Assistance with content production: a tool that will make it easier to roll out the same content across multiple formats, and also pinpoint biases undermining the quality of news.
MediaGen aims to demonstrate that AI innovation can be used for reliable, responsible, and independent news. It is a collaborative project so various news outlets will take part in the initial phase of assessing what is required. Some of the technologies developed under MediaGen will then be made available via an open-source licence, for the benefit of the entire media sector while other parts will be commercialised.
More details of the bankground of the project is here.
