AI Strategy Lead – Newsroom Automation

Location: Hybrid (with travel to a local ITV office when required)

Hiring range: £55,000 - £60,000

The team:

Our ITV News teams deliver high quality, trustworthy and impartial journalism to millions of people on television and online. It’s a fast moving environment with a huge variety of roles on offer and plenty of challenges. We operate from 11 main news production centres across England, Northern Ireland, Wales and the Channel Islands. We also have a Political Unit based in the heart of Westminster and produce a range of current affairs & factual programming at ITV Wales, UTV and ITV Border.

The role:

ITV News is seeking an experienced and visionary individual for the role of AI Lead. This critical position will drive the strategic development, adoption and ethical governance of Artificial Intelligence across our Nations and Regions news operation, blending production workflow expertise with a strong understanding of emerging AI production technologies. This person will be responsible for delivering strategic goals, evaluating tools and overseeing the implementation of AI solutions that enhance content creation, automation, and overall newsroom efficiency.

Key Responsibilities:

• AI Governance and Ethics: Oversee AI governance across ITV Nations and Regions, ensuring all AI implementations adhere to internal guidelines and regulatory requirements. Collaborate with Legal and Procurement to manage AI vendors ensuring they meet data privacy and training data usage policies.
• Change Management: Play a role in leading and managing change across a large, complex and high‑profile organisation as new AI‑powered workflows are introduced.
• Stakeholder Management: Manage internal and external stakeholders, including editorial teams, technology partners, and industry bodies.
• Content Provenance: Lead the exploration and any implementation of content provenance standards (e.g., C2PA) to ensure ITV News Nations and Regions output remains trusted and verifiable.
• Intelligent Automation Oversight: Oversee the development of content analysis and intelligent automation systems by collaborating closely with automation engineers to ensure delivered solutions meet the specific operational requirements of our news service.
• Editorial AI Tools: Lead the identification, evaluation, and, where appropriate, the implementation of editorial AI tools to enhance journalistic workflows.
• Graphics AI Tools: Lead the identification, evaluation, and, where appropriate, the implementation of AI tools specifically for the creation of graphics for our news output in collaboration with the ITV News Graphics Hub and the ITV Network News Graphics team.
• Newsroom Production System Integration: Lead the integration of AI tools as a core feature of our newsroom production system.

Skills you’ll need (minimum criteria):

• Practical experience in strategic AI implementation in a production environment and a demonstrably strong grasp of how AI is developing within media production.
• An understanding of the importance of AI governance within a PSB News provider environment.
• Proven ability to manage internal and external stakeholders.
• Experience leading and managing change would be an advantage.

Other things we’re looking for (key criteria):

• Experience in a newsroom‑based editorial or production role.
• An understanding of newsroom production workflows for broadcast television and digital platforms.

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion is at the heart of what we do at ITV and we want to ensure we reflect our audience both on screen and in our workforce. ITV is for Everyone and we encourage applications from Deaf, Disabled and Neurodivergent people and People of Colour to apply for this role. As a Disability Confident Leader, if you meet the minimum criteria for a role and you have declared that you are disabled, we’ll guarantee to take you to the next stage (minimum criteria above).

Newsrooms are busy and pressurised environments, involving live news production, which often requires colleagues to make quick decisions under pressure. We also need people who are able to use their initiative and, particularly for editorial roles, know what information might be required and how to research it. We need to test these abilities at the interview stage to understand how candidates will react when operating in a pressurised environment. This is a fundamental requirement of the role.

We will always consider any request for reasonable adjustments as part of the interview process, for example sharing key themes when that is requested in connection with a neurodivergent condition, whilst still ensuring that we are able to test a candidate's ability to operate in the specific environment of a newsroom.

Please note the notice period for this role is 2 months (this will include any new contracts/ secondments). Please note, this role will be subject to a satisfactory disclosure from the Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS).