Latest news with #KatheyBattrick
Broadcast Pro
04-08-2025
- Business
- Broadcast Pro
Keeping AI real in the newsroom
With multilingual indexing, proprietary datasets and AI validation, Asharq News is building one of the region's most advanced AI operations. In an exclusive interview with Vijaya Cherian, Kathey Battrick discusses how the network's AI Taskforce is executing its AI strategy. Artificial intelligence (AI) is the buzzword in most boardrooms today, and even if a broadcaster hasn't started work on it, it is the core of many tech and strategy conversations. Few broadcasters have approached it as systematically and pragmatically as Asharq News. Rather than rushing into flashy integrations, the Arab broadcaster has taken a measured, governance-first approach, embedding AI across its editorial and technical operations through a dedicated cross-functional taskforce. At the helm of this initiative is Kathey Battrick, who leads Asharq's AI Taskforce, and is Head of Media Management and Library at the network. But as she is quick to point out, this is not a one-person mission, nor is it driven by hype. 'At Asharq, we recognised early on that AI would have a transformative impact on the media industry. We established the AI Taskforce to proactively shape how it is adopted across our organisation. Its purpose is to ensure that our use of AI aligns with editorial standards, legal and regulatory obligations and broader strategic objectives.' It includes editorial, technology, legal and HR committee members who define strategy and governance, and AI champions who contribute technical expertise from areas such as engineering, digital technology and project management. That diversity of perspective has proven essential, especially as the group developed the broadcast network's AI principles, ethical policies and internal oversight systems. 'We took a structured, collaborative approach,' Battrick remarks. 'First, we introduced the Taskforce's objectives and gathered concerns and expectations from across the business. From there, we defined our AI principles, objectives and success criteria.' Responsibilities were assigned early on and a clear governance structure was built to define decision-making authority. This was followed by internal workshops and awareness-building sessions to communicate the policy and support alignment before any rollout began. That foundation led to the creation of editorial guidelines, a formal AI policy, and a mechanism for reviewing and approving all AI-related initiatives to ensure consistency and accountability. Tracking AI-assisted journalism What sets Asharq's efforts apart is how deeply editorial objectives are embedded in its AI strategy. 'We champion the idea of AI-assisted journalism – using AI to enhance and support editorial work,' says Battrick. 'Editorial colleagues were part of the AI Taskforce from day one, helping to shape the policy and ensure our approach reflects newsroom values and standards.' One of the clearest examples of this vision in action is Asharq's use of AI for multilingual scene indexing. Originally built using off-the-shelf computer vision services, the system has evolved significantly. 'Over the past year, we've moved towards a more advanced multimodal approach. This now allows us to generate human-like scene descriptions in both English and Arabic, significantly improving the richness of our metadata.' This metadata, crucial for search and content retrieval, is validated by Asharq's news librarians and seamlessly integrated into platforms like Avid, Mimir and the company's own internal search system. 'It has transformed how our production teams work. They can now instantly locate specific shots, search in their preferred language, and we have integrated the content with various production platforms and tools so regardless of broadcast or social production workflows, it can be accessed.' Each media asset goes through a three-stage enrichment lifecycle: first at the point of ingestion, then following AI tagging, and finally after human validation by Asharq's news librarians to ensure editorial accuracy and consistency. Context and customisation Asharq's collaboration with AI vendor Moments Lab played a significant role in the early phases of its indexing work, and the partnership remains ongoing. However, the process was far from plug-and-play. 'One of the key learnings from our early work with Moments Lab was the importance of context and customisation,' says Battrick. 'While their platform incorporates some off-the-shelf models as part of its architecture, it also allows for significant tailoring. Together, we worked to adapt and refine the solution to better serve our editorial workflows, particularly for Arabic-language content and region-specific topics.' That gap led Asharq to develop its own proprietary dataset of Arab public figures and business leaders. 'We began by identifying the individuals most frequently featured in our coverage, including our news anchors, reporters, politicians and business leaders. It was built using only content that falls under our copyright, based on footage and imagery from our own broadcasts and productions.' The dataset, maintained and expanded by the news library and data teams, includes detailed profiles with name variations and professional designations in both Arabic and English. It is actively maintained by Asharq's news librarians, who regularly update it as new figures emerge or public roles evolve. This has dramatically improved both tagging accuracy and content discovery. 'Journalists can now search by a person's name, even if they're only mentioned visually or their name was misspelled in original transcripts.' On the backend, Asharq's engineers have worked closely with R&D and Moments Lab to ensure metadata flows seamlessly through the system. 'Every media asset is updated a minimum of three times: once when it's ingested into our system, again after AI-generated metadata has been applied, and a final time once it has been reviewed and updated by a news librarian. This layered enrichment process ensures that the metadata remains accurate, comprehensive and consistent across platforms.' For journalists and producers, the impact is tangible. 'They do not need to rely on file names, folders or memory to locate footage, and they can search in either Arabic or English. AI-generated metadata, validated by our news librarians, includes scene-level detail, person detection and contextual tags, making it easy to pinpoint the exact shot they need.' News librarians also apply an additional verification layer that flags common misidentification issues – such as similar-looking individuals or frequently confused name variants – helping ensure a higher degree of accuracy, especially in multilingual news environments. Closing gaps in global models The newsroom has also invested in improving generative AI's understanding of Arab contexts. Asharq is presently working with Moments Lab on a research collaboration aimed at benchmarking AI video understanding using its own curated datasets. 'A key long-term goal of the project is to improve how generative AI describes content from the Middle East, an area that remains significantly under-represented in most AI training datasets and current state-of-the-art video understanding models.' Evaluation of the AI models combines both technical and editorial review, Battrick explains. 'We assess AI performance not just on technical accuracy like scene detection or tagging, but also on how well it understands context and cultural relevance. Recognising important people, places or topics in our region requires more than pattern matching – it requires awareness of meaning and significance.' That's where feedback remains critical. 'Our news librarians are central to this – spotting inaccuracies, correcting tags and highlighting areas where the model may misinterpret content.' This is shared with Moments Lab through a structured feedback loop, ensuring model improvements are based on both data and real editorial experience. Challenges, caution and future focus While Asharq has made significant progress, Battrick is clear about the hurdles ahead. 'The biggest opportunities are in real-time translation, smart clipping and automated rights management. The biggest challenges? Managing bias, building trust in AI outputs and ensuring that systems can scale across different languages and content types without compromising editorial standards.' Balancing innovation and oversight remain central to Asharq's strategy. 'We've set up an AI Taskforce that brings together people from across the business including editorial, tech, legal and operations, so that new ideas are explored with the right oversight from day one. Our governance isn't a separate layer; it's built into how we work.' Every new AI project starts with a review of objectives, risks and criteria for success, ensuring that tools support actual newsroom needs. That operational pragmatism is also evident in the approach to training. 'Training is a big focus for us at Asharq; we're working together with our HR team to make sure it's embedded into how we roll out and scale AI.' Prompt engineering workshops and multiskilling initiatives are now in place, not just to prepare staff for AI but to support evolving production practices over time. 'This is about futureproofing our people and ensuring they feel confident and prepared as their roles evolve.' What lies ahead Looking ahead, the roadmap includes more internal innovation and deeper collaborations. But for Battrick, the foundation has already been laid. 'It's such an exciting time for AI technology, it's hard to pick just one thing, but I'm particularly proud of setting up the AI Taskforce. It's given us a clear and practical way to explore innovation while keeping governance front and centre.' Asharq's experience shows that real transformation doesn't come from adopting the latest tool; it comes from designing systems that are flexible, responsible and built for modern newsrooms. In a region where many broadcasters are still defining their AI strategies, Asharq News is already showing what it means to operationalise AI at scale, on its own terms.
Broadcast Pro
20-05-2025
- Business
- Broadcast Pro
The expanding role of AI in broadcast
An AI discussion at the BroadcastPro Summit KSA looked at AI-driven video production automation, virtual production, piracy protection, metadata tagging, watermarking and real-time content takedown solutions. We bring you a summary of what some of the experts had to say. A 2025 report by Canadian video streaming tech company Haivision identifies AI and machine learning as the top emerging trends in the broadcast industry, with 64% of respondents naming them as the most transformative technologies for broadcast production. The report also notes a sharp rise in the adoption of AI in broadcast workflows, with 25% of participants using it, up from last year's 9%. Further, 41% of respondents anticipate using AI within the next two years. This growing reliance on AI was the focal point of a panel discussion at the BroadcastPro Summit in Saudi Arabia, moderated by Jody Neckles, Principal Solutions Architect at Backlight and founder of Technative. Titled 'Unlocking AI in Broadcast and Streaming: Innovations and Challenges', the session featured Eyad Al Dwaik, Director of Engineering at stc/ Intigral; Kathey Battrick, Head of Media Management & AI Taskforce Leader at Asharq Network; and Alaa Ali, Director of Anti-Piracy and Technology at RightsHero. Jody Neckles opened the discussion by emphasising how AI is transforming broadcast operations from content production to distribution, driving innovation and efficiency while raising important questions about fair use and ethics. Kathey Battrick shared how Asharq uses AI to manage its vast and ever-growing content libraries: 'Our main challenge is to ensure that the content is easily and quickly discoverable by all the production teams, regardless of the platform they use to produce it. Along with this, we must also quicken the process of understanding content received in foreign languages. The transcription and translation must be done very quickly. Currently we are using AI to create metadata for nearly 1,600 hours of incoming content each month. This includes mostly raw video content, along with the live channel output that is recorded for Asharq News.' 'Initially we used AI for more traditional functions such as face detection, object recognition, transcription and translation,' she continued. 'Recently we've added a generative multimodal AI solution to create human-like scene descriptions, making it easier to highlight key moments in content. Since we have both Arabic and English content, we are also creating multilingual metadata to meet the search preferences of our users.' For Asharq, AI's facial recognition capabilities have been particularly valuable. 'When we launched, there were no existing models capable of identifying Arab business leaders and public figures, which are essential for our content. Over the years, we have built our own dataset to address this gap. Every individual we interview is documented with their name, job title and aliases in both English and Arabic. This has been particularly useful for standardising name spellings across platforms, as Arabic names often have multiple English transliterations,' explained Battrick. Elaborating on the workflow, she noted: 'Once the content arrives, it's sent for AI-powered metadata processing. The processed metadata is then distributed across all our production and asset management platforms. Our archivists review and refine the data before it is reintegrated, improving accuracy and boosting user confidence in AI-generated metadata.' This content indexing process is applied to both raw footage and live video streams relayed to Asharq, in addition to the 1,600 hours of incoming content mentioned earlier. Developments such as these are useful for producers across both broadcast and digital media. The processed data also has the potential to filter through to owned and operated platforms, making content more discoverable on them, noted Neckles. Intigral, a part of Saudi Telecom Group (stc), uses AI for content analysis and delivery. 'We are working on a project using AI to analyse our word library to create metadata around the genres, mood and settings. This data will feed into our recommendation system, providing viewers with more relevant content suggestions,' remarked Eyad Al Dwaik. Over the past couple of years, Intigral has also been working with one of its partners on an AI model to enhance its encoding. 'After deploying the new model, we saw a 67% reduction in our video encoding bitrates. It significantly improved efficiency while maintaining quality. With regards to ultra-HD, achieving high-quality video at around 3-5MB per second is remarkable. Our customer satisfaction went up, as did the KPIs for the engineering department. It was a win-win situation,' he added. AI also serves as an assistant to Intigral's engineering team, enabling it to code faster and more accurately. 'Some scripts and code used to take me a day to write. With AI, I can do it in less than an hour. If I'm using a new language and I don't know the syntax, I just have to input what I want and AI generates the code for me. If there are errors, I provide feedback and the AI corrects itself,' he said. At RightsHero, AI is being injected into crawling mechanisms to enhance pirated content detection and monitoring on various platforms, including social media, search engines and website aggregators. 'We've integrated AI into the enforcement process to detect and remove content more accurately. Our goal is to implement AI across the entire workflow, from searching and detecting to taking down content, ensuring a more efficient and streamlined process,' said Alaa Ali. Additionally, RightsHero leverages metadata gathered from aggregator sites for faster pirate content identification, he explained. 'We've also trained the AI to decide the best takedown path – whether to contact the platform or alert the hosting provider. So, depending upon the data available, the AI chooses the fastest route to disable that content.' Social media platforms such as YouTube and Facebook have their own anti-piracy measures. 'Most social media platforms have their own content ID systems, which automatically scan uploaded videos against a database of copyrighted material. However, content pirates are now armed with tactics that allow them to evade detection. To counter this, we use automated software that can identify content that the content ID system may have missed. This software detects unauthorised content, reports it to the social media platform and ensures it is taken down immediately. Third-party companies such as RightsHero are not involved in this process. The platforms develop their own tools and use AI and machine learning to improve the process.' Social media platforms have also enhanced their detection process with the use of AI. 'Five years ago, the detection was much slower than it is now. Now, once the reference file is uploaded, the detection and takedown is immediate,' added Ali. Elaborating on content protection and fighting piracy, Al Dwaik said: 'Piracy is becoming easier by the day. Earlier, it was harder to get pirated content. Now, for as little as $50 viewers can stream premium content platforms like NBC, Shahid and stc. Fighting piracy is a never-ending battle. Here, AI can help with anomaly detection. For instance, pirates' behaviour is different from normal users when it comes to content consumption. If a user consumes a week's worth of content in 24 hours, that signals suspicious activity. AI can find such anomalies with the right training. Without AI, identifying piracy sources takes a couple of days; with AI, it just takes a few minutes.' Intigral still currently relies on a manual watermarking process, but AI could streamline this process in the future. Interestingly, pirates are also leveraging technology to infringe copyrighted content. While AI has not yet permeated piracy rings, automation is widely used. 'Previously, piracy involved manually capturing and uploading content. In case of a takedown, they would have to start from scratch again. Now, automation allows them to re-upload the content within seconds. This makes automation and AI doubly important – we now have to adapt and match the pirates' sophisticated set-up, else we lose the piracy battle,' said Ali candidly. Ali suggested integrating AI with blockchain technology for better piracy control: 'Blockchain can serve as a decentralised identifier for copyright holders, preventing content duplication and ensuring uniqueness.' Despite the rapid advances in AI, all the panellists agreed that human oversight remains essential. 'The human factor can never be eliminated. Its role, however, has changed. AI will never be 100% accurate and human intervention will always be needed to train, supervise and correct AI. For example, sometimes AI is unable to identify copyright infringement, so human intervention is needed,' said Ali. Battrick echoed this sentiment, highlighting that Asharq still employs archivists despite AI integration: 'We don't feel that AI will ever replace our archivists. In fact, they have become more important than before. Their role has shifted from metadata creation to supervising AI-generated metadata. AI, especially in facial recognition, is not 100% accurate. When a face is detected and indexed by the system, a human reviewer is still needed to verify and correct any errors or biases. For instance, Boris Johnson and his brother look quite similar, and the AI repeatedly misidentified the brother as Boris. So we need to remain vigilant in such cases.' Al Dwaik revealed how Intigral's attempt to use AI for censorship was unsuccessful: 'Our goal was to develop a system where AI could handle censorship by learning from past catalogues and censorship decisions. However, it didn't work as expected – we realised that AI cannot take responsibility. If AI makes an error and inappropriate content is aired, we can't simply blame the technology. A human reviewer is essential to ensure accuracy. Since we couldn't fully trust AI for this task, we decided not to deploy the system.' Al Dwaik shared his vision for the future of AI in data centres: 'The future of AI is to have an AI assistant available to engineers, where the engineer will ask the AI assistant to test some changes on the staging environment, run tests and provide the results, and assist with deploying these changes to the production environment.' As the discussion concluded, the panellists agreed that while AI is revolutionising broadcast workflows, it cannot function independently of human expertise.
Broadcast Pro
07-03-2025
- Business
- Broadcast Pro
Rise launches Middle East Chapter to promote gender diversity in broadcast technology
Rise, a global advocacy organisation dedicated to advancing gender diversity in the broadcast and media technology sectors, has officially launched its Middle East Chapter. Timed to coincide with International Women's Day, the initiative aims to increase the representation of women in the region's broadcast industry while strengthening Rise's commitment to mentorship, networking and career development. Since its establishment in 2017, Rise has provided free membership to professionals and aspiring individuals in media technology, offering access to networking events, workshops and conferences. Key initiatives include a six-month global mentoring programme, the Rise Awards celebrating women's achievements in the industry, the Rise Academy's youth outreach efforts, and Rise AV, a newly introduced initiative focusing on gender diversity in the audiovisual sector. Women's workforce participation in the Middle East is growing, with female employment rates reaching 50% in some GCC nations. However, leadership positions remain male-dominated, with women holding only 7% of board seats in GCC companies compared to the global average of 20%. The media sector reflects a similar trend, where women make up 40% of journalists worldwide but occupy just 24% of top editorial roles. The Rise Middle East Chapter seeks to bridge this gap by fostering a strong professional network for women in the industry. The chapter will also have a presence at key industry events, including the Broadcast Summit, Arab Media Forum and CABSAT, to drive conversations on gender diversity. The initiative will be led by Kathey Battrick, Head of Media Management and Library at Asharq News Network, alongside Katie Purcer Golding, Acting Chief Marketing Officer at SRMG, who will oversee marketing and communications efforts. Speaking about the launch, Kathey Battrick said: 'I have admired the global work of Rise for a while, and having lived and worked in the MENA region for over five years, it was only natural to step forward and take on this role. The initiatives in the GCC to promote women in our industry are increasing, and this chapter will serve as a catalyst for even greater progress.' With the launch of its Middle East Chapter, Rise continues to champion inclusivity in the broadcast technology sector, providing women with the tools and opportunities to succeed.
Campaign ME
07-03-2025
- Business
- Campaign ME
Rise Middle East launches to boost gender diversity in broadcast technology
Rise, the global advocacy organisation dedicated to promoting gender diversity in the broadcast and media technology sectors, has launched its Middle East Chapter. In line with International Women's Day (IWD), a globally recognised celebration of women's achievements and a platform for advocating gender equality, the launch aims to amplify the presence of women in the region's broadcast industry while reinforcing Rise's commitment to empowering women through mentorship, networking and career development initiatives. Established in 2017, Rise offers a variety of programmes and initiatives designed to support and advance women in media technology. The organisation provides free membership to professionals and aspiring individuals in the field, granting access to networking events, workshops and conferences. The Middle East Chapter of Rise will be led by Kathey Battrick, Head of Media Management and Library at Asharq News Network, and Katie Purcer Golding, Acting Chief Marketing Officer at SRMG, who will spearhead marketing and communications efforts for the initiative. 'I have admired the global work of Rise for a while, and having lived and worked in the MENA region for over five years, it was only natural to step forward and take on this role,' said Kathey Battrick. 'The initiatives in the GCC to promote women in our industry are increasing, and this chapter will serve as a catalyst for even greater progress.' Key initiatives of Rise Mentoring programme: A six-month global initiative offering guidance and support from industry experts. A six-month global initiative offering guidance and support from industry experts. Rise Awards: An annual event celebrating outstanding achievements of women in the broadcast industry. An annual event celebrating outstanding achievements of women in the broadcast industry. Rise Academy: A youth outreach program that delivers broadcast engineering and technical workshops to inspire the next generation. A youth outreach program that delivers broadcast engineering and technical workshops to inspire the next generation. Rise AV: A new initiative launched in January 2025 to drive gender diversity in the audiovisual sector. Expanding women's presence in media in the MENA region Women's participation in the workforce across the region is growing at a rapid rate, with female workforce participation rates now reaching up to 50 per cent across the GCC. Despite these gains, women remain significantly underrepresented in leadership positions, holding only about 7 per cent of board seats in GCC companies, compared to a global average of 20 per cent. The media sector also mirrors this trend, with women comprising 40% of journalists globally but only 24 per cent of top editorial positions. Rise's Middle East Chapter seeks to address these challenges by creating a strong network of women who can inspire, support, and collaborate with one another. The chapter will also have a significant presence at major industry events such as the Broadcast Summit, Arab Media Forum, and CABSAT, ensuring that conversations around gender diversity remain at the forefront of industry discussions. With the launch of its Middle East Chapter, Rise continues its mission to foster an inclusive and equitable broadcast technology sector, providing women with the resources and opportunities they need to thrive.
