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Artificial Intelligence (AI) has found its way into almost every industry, including the media. AI is being used in multiple departments in the media space such as advertising, audience data, video optimization, and even for content suggestions.
For editorial and production workflows, software companies such as ppi Media, Eidosmedia, among others, are exploring and offering AI-based automated page layouts for newspapers. Although they may differ in their approach and features, the objective of automation is generally to achieve precision and speed that can also enable variations that would require tedious iterations if done manually.
The Hamburg-based ppi Media, for example, provides a subscription-based solution to its template-based software that runs in the cloud using an Adobe InDesign server at ppi’s end. In addition to automated pagemaking in the cloud, publishers can also make special pages and layouts or alterations locally, at their own InDesign workstations. Indian Printer and Publisher has written extensively about this solution in its September 2023 issue.
The benefits of the automated layout are efficiency, quality, and flexibility – it helps reduce layout times by at least 60 to 80%. ppi Media, which has a strong presence in India, and has been talking about it with publishers, is now reaching out to Indian newspaper houses with this product.
Eidosmedia, which has a presence in the Indian newspaper industry, also has a solution for automatically laying out news stories on print pages. It integrates an AI-driven layout tool developed by Canadian developer Sophi.io with its Méthode software – promising to boost productivity in what is still a highly manual process in Indian news media operations.
Automated page layout solutions include AidaDXP, which claims to allow users to create a 16-page newspaper in an average time of 45 seconds. Several others such as DrEdition Print Automation, Layout-8000, and InterRed SmartPaper offer similar products.
Maintaining a newspaper’s design grammar and identity
So what happens in an automated layout system? How much AI or automated layout is acceptable, so that the newspaper does not lose its identity? And how flexible are such solutions?
Tom Brinkmann, product manager, ppi Media, explains that there are basically two approaches among all the solution providers – those that rely heavily on AI for layout automation and those that rely more on rule-based algorithms. “We believe that AI is useful in many areas and has great strengths. But as the basis for an automated layout solution, it is our firm conviction that rule-based algorithms are easier to handle and lead to much better results.”
ppi Media’s solution, he says, retains a newspaper’s design grammar and identity by combining each customer’s article templates with rules that are typical for the layout of their newspaper. “This way, the layout results remain predictable and easy to control, while at the same time, the entire layout process is highly automated. Maintaining the familiar look and feel of a newspaper is very important to us, as is the fact that the users themselves can control all of the steps of the automated layout,” Brinkmann says.
So can AI be used to suggest headlines and images or offer ‘edit-to-fit-story-to-page’ options? Brinkmann says that in the future, AI could help make layout recommendations based on previous user choices. “For body text, we use AI to make the text copy-fit. Suggestions for headlines are used in our editor to create articles but can be made accessible in the layout tool as well. This is on our road map. Using AI to suggest images is also something we are considering. In general, we will use a very focused and well-controlled approach to integrate additional AI functions in our solution.”
ppi Media’s solution is based on straightforward algorithms that can be customized by layout rules. With these rules, one can get results that are difficult to learn using AI-based solutions. All of the rules and article templates that ppi Media uses for layout creation can be adapted by the customer without its help, so everything is in the hands of the customer if desired. “Of course, we help with the initial setup with a few hours of training and are always available to answer questions or review the setup together with the customer.”
In India, print media production, especially that of newspapers, is still very dynamic and the pages are prone to last-minute changes. Can highly automated products take this fluidity into account?
Brinkmann answers that his company’s solution produces open InDesign documents. These can be changed using Adobe InDesign or ppi Media’s browser-based layout solution with an InDesign server running in the background. Thus changes can be made manually if necessary – or the page editor can re-initiate the whole process of automated layout creation to get an alternate version of the page.
Indian publishers seem receptive
ppi Media officials, he says, have recently returned from a trip to meet Indian customers where they presented the fully automated layout personally to the publishers, and also at the Wan-Ifra Digital Media India conference in Delhi in March. “The feedback was extremely positive. As Indian publishers are becoming more and more cost-conscious, the opportunity to save time and labor without losing the creative identity of the newspaper is very welcome. We have hit a nerve in India with this development,” Brinkmann says.
ppi Media is organizing a free webinar on 7 May, 1:30 pm GMT, for Indian publishers on its automated layout solution. Click here to register.
