Uli Köppen: How Bavarian Broadcasting is preparing for an AI-mediated future where trusted content wins

Most major newsrooms have now moved beyond early experimentation with AI. The main challenge now is determining how to govern effectively, scale consistently, and strategically position AI across the entire organization—while maintaining public trust as a central priority.

This week on Newsroom Robots, host Nikita Roy sits down with Uli Köppen, Chief AI Officer at Bavarian Broadcasting (BR), to talk about what it really looks like to lead AI strategy inside one of Europe’s largest public broadcasting networks.

Uli makes a compelling case for why every newsroom should establish a dedicated AI leadership function, backed by an interdisciplinary governance structure. They also dig into a question defining the next phase of AI strategy for many newsrooms: in a world of AI overviews, zero-click search, and agent-driven information retrieval, how do you maintain your brand as a recognizable, trustworthy source? Uli shares why BR opted out of AI crawling and what they are building instead, including a vision for a verified content data pool that could power new products across multiple media organizations.

In this episode, they cover:

02:09 — What it means to be Chief AI Officer at a public broadcaster

06:30 — Why every newsroom needs an interdisciplinary AI board, not just a single AI leader

09:06 — The skills newsrooms need to build for an AI-driven environment

11:00 — Why reinventing workflows starts before adding any technology

16:28 — Inside the Oktoberfest Chatbot and the collaborative content pool powering it

23:40 — Using AI for smarter community engagement and real-time moderation

26:30 — The personalized audio news briefing that users love and where it’s headed

36:00 — How BR’s AI guidelines evolved from broad guardrails to clear, example-based rules

41:40 — The strategic question: be part of AI platforms, or build recognizable products of your own?

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