Representatives from La Nación, El Tiempo, and ABC Color agreed that artificial intelligence must serve journalistic quality, newsroom efficiency, and audiences, while concerns grow over content distribution and the sustainability of the news business.
The adoption of artificial intelligence in newsrooms is no longer a discussion about the future, but about how to respond to a transformation taking place in real time. However, beyond technological enthusiasm, Latin American media organizations face challenges related to audience trust, business models, and control over their content.
This was one of the main points of consensus during the panel “The AI Era: How Media Organizations Are Reinventing Themselves,” which brought together Juan Simo, editor-in-chief and AI specialist at La Nación (Argentina); José Carlos García, multimedia editor and new business manager at El Tiempo (Colombia); and Natalia Daporta, digital newsroom manager at ABC Color (Paraguay), moderated by Rodrigo Salazar, executive director of the Peruvian Press Council.
For Juan Simo, media organizations are experiencing a decisive moment. Widespread access to artificial intelligence tools has democratized technological capabilities that were previously available only to large organizations.
“Any media outlet, regardless of its size, can implement some type of AI technology,” he said. However, he warned that this availability means technology alone is no longer a competitive advantage. The difference will lie in how each organization integrates it into its editorial and production processes.
He identified four trends redefining the information ecosystem: the expansion of generative AI capabilities, the growth of bots as content consumers, the disintermediation between media organizations and audiences, and the emergence of autonomous agents capable of influencing the production and distribution of information.
The three panelists presented advanced AI adoption experiences and agreed that journalism remains an essentially human endeavor.
“Artificial intelligence does not do journalism,” said José Carlos García. “It can recreate texts, images, or songs, but editorial and creative decisions remain the responsibility of people.”
At El Tiempo, he explained, AI is viewed as a support tool, following what he described as an “Iron Man” approach: an armor that enhances capabilities but always requires a person inside to make decisions.
Natalia Daporta expressed a similar view. “It is important that we always keep humans in control,” she said. “Technology is at our service, not the other way around.”
The three organizations shared concrete examples of AI implementation.
At La Nación, the strategy combines technological infrastructure, training, and cultural transformation. The newspaper has developed its own tools to automate news monitoring, process large volumes of information, facilitate semantic searches within its archive, and assist journalists in complex investigations.
Highlighted projects include the automated analysis of hundreds of hours of speeches by President Javier Milei and the creation of digital avatars based on the outlet’s journalists to explain statistical predictions during sports competitions.
At El Tiempo, the first stage focused on governance and training. The organization discovered that nearly 70% of its newsroom was already using AI tools before a formal strategy existed.
Based on that assessment, it created a specialized team, established usage policies, and developed internal tools to monitor trends, support breaking news coverage, and adapt content for multiple platforms.
Meanwhile, ABC Color presented a solution developed to address a daily challenge: managing its photographic archive. The tool, called ABC Vision, uses facial recognition, object identification, geolocation, and automatic metadata generation to catalog images. The initiative significantly reduced the time spent searching for photographs and achieved adoption rates close to 90% within the newsroom.
Beyond the tools themselves, the panel devoted much of the discussion to organizational challenges. The three participants agreed that the main obstacle is often cultural rather than technological.
For Simo, the key is involving journalists from the beginning and focusing on solving specific problems faced by each team. “Innovation is like an elastic band: if you stop stretching it, it goes back,” he said.
García emphasized the importance of recognizing generational diversity within newsrooms and accompanying transformation with ongoing training and certification programs.
Daporta noted that clearly explaining the objectives of each initiative is essential to facilitate adoption and reduce resistance to change.
The conversation also addressed a growing concern in the industry: the use of journalistic content by artificial intelligence platforms and models. The panelists agreed that the debate over financial compensation is only beginning.
Simo raised questions about how value will be recovered in a scenario where AI agents consume and redistribute information without users directly visiting news websites.
From El Tiempo, García argued that the industry must engage in a collective discussion with major technology platforms. “The magic of AI was built by training on content produced by all of us,” he said. “It is a conversation that the industry must have collectively.”
Daporta agreed that no individual media organization has enough capacity to face this challenge alone. “It must be a common effort,” she said.
