Our Executive Function series features perspectives from leaders driving transformation through AI.
Channel NewsAsia (CNA) is a global news broadcaster based in Singapore that reaches 150 million homes and connected devices across Asia, Europe, and the US. It produces award winning news and current affairs content across all platforms from digital, broadcast, audio and more.
We spoke to Walter Fernandez about the journey CNA is taking with AI, how it’s transforming the way its journalists work with AI and what the future looks like within the newsroom with AI.
We started experimenting with AI back in 2019—long before ChatGPT took the world by storm. Even then, we saw tremendous potential for AI to transform newsrooms. At that time, most editors saw AI as an assistive technology, something on the side to help them.
I have a more aggressive view. First, AI capabilities are growing exponentially. Second, AI will fundamentally reshape how newsrooms operate—more so than the social media disruption two decades ago. Third, AI will become a foundational backbone technology.
So if you ask about our vision at CNA, we’re “all in.” That doesn’t mean being the very first, but it does mean being an early adopter to AI, because the benefits compound over time. At the same time, early adoption must not be reckless—we spent a year drafting and refining our AI guidelines, setting up cross-functional oversight, enforcing human-in-the-loop processes, and newsroom specific dos and don’ts. For example, we don’t allow cloned AI voices or AI-generated footage in news coverage or documentaries.
And we don’t tolerate vanity projects. Everything must solve real problems or pain points. We’ll never call ourselves an “AI-first newsroom.”
AI is now central to our disinformation work, in surfacing hidden stories in vast data, and in delivering content across multiple formats and languages.
Let me use Singapore’s recent General Election as an example. That was a time when we really deployed ChatGPT in our coverage.
There were two main ways. First, it acted as a “second brain” for reporters. We built internal GPTs with verified information to provide context for stories.
Second, we used OpenAI’s advanced reasoning models to analyze election campaigns, especially manipulative social media campaigns. One striking case: ChatGPT discovered a link between two suspicious accounts that had changed their profile names during the campaign. We hadn’t asked it to look for that, nor had we considered it—but ChatGPT surfaced the anomaly and helped us uncover hidden connections in real time.
That’s what excites us about ChatGPT—the ability to do things in the newsroom we simply couldn’t do before.
The turning point was finding the first real newsroom use case. We asked journalists “what is your biggest pain point”. There were many, but one stood out—covering Parliament.
Parliament sittings can be long and arduous. So we built “Parliament AI.” It could recognize the faces of over 90 MPs, transcribe speeches, generate searchable summaries—all of which helped our journalists cover Parliament more efficiently.
To date, it’s incredible to see that the team has created over twenty custom GPTs, including a general purpose GPT “Newsroom Buddy” to help journalists brainstorm ideas and check against the CNA style guide. This has been one of the most popular GPTs so far.
We’ve rolled out more than 500 enterprise licenses across CNA and another 2,000 at group level. Everyone is using the tools—but training is just as important. We run basic and advanced training with the OpenAI team, hackathons, and encourage cross-functional teams. It’s not just for the “AI team.” Editors, journalists, audience teams, everyone is involved.
We have a vision to build a fully AI-enabled newsroom, in which we leverage AI effectively in every process. In an era where AI tools can generate an infinite amount of content and clone our physical and audio likeness in minutes, the true differentiating factor for newsrooms will no longer be about language, format or the medium they publish or broadcast in. In a sea of “AI slop” it will be all about the quality and relevance of our content.
So my message is this: AI will be a foundational technology to achieve our public service mission. Newsrooms must realise that we are long past the “wait and see” phase. It’s now about carefully considered tech stack and process transformation. Now is the time to get your staff excited about the potential of AI in the newsroom. Transformation will be anchored around the notion that AI will not only help improve the work of journalists but also enable them to tackle new and more ambitious projects.
Think big and dream even bigger about what an AI-enabled organisation can accomplish.
