Inside Network18’s AI push where journalism meets the machine

When Dr Frankenstein defied nature to create life, his monster brought him not just grief but destruction and, ultimately, death. In contrast, Astro Boy, the beloved manga series, gave us a robot child built to resemble a lost son. Unlike Frankenstein’s monster, Astro is gentle, emotional, and heroic.

In both stories, the inhuman creation becomes a mirror, sometimes destroying its creator, sometimes surpassing them. In doing so, it tests the very idea of what makes us human. Both are apt metaphors for this moment, as artificial intelligence (AI) stands poised to either elevate our civilisation or unravel it.

Reality has finally caught up with what science fiction has been warning us about for generations. Today, artificial intelligence is no longer confined to imagined futures, it is rapidly reshaping entire industries, and journalism is among the most deeply affected.

Just last month, media conglomerate Network18 named Nalin Mehta as its first Chief AI Officer for editorial — a rare, possibly unprecedented move in Indian, and even Asian, newsrooms.

In the Indian news media landscape, both Network18 and Nalin Mehta are influential forces. The media conglomerate owns 20 television channels across 16 languages and operates four digital news platforms in 13 languages, giving it tremendous reach across the country.

Mehta, meanwhile, is a seasoned media professional who currently serves as the managing editor of Moneycontrol, one of India’s most widely read finance news websites. His career spans leadership roles at The Times of India, India Today, and NDTV, along with academic tenures at institutions like IIM Bangalore and Shiv Nadar University.

With this appointment, Network18 has made its intentions clear: artificial intelligence will sit at the core of how the organisation thinks, reports, and operates.

“We are putting AI at the centre of everything we do,” says Mehta.    

Falling in love with artificial intelligence

To understand Network18’s deep commitment to AI, one must look back decades to when Google first transformed the media landscape with its mastery of search and access. “I believe the AI shift we’re witnessing today is not just similar but far more profound than the Google revolution 20 to 25 years ago,” says Mehta.

It all comes down to staying ahead of the curve. While Network18 has used AI across its brands for the past few years, the efforts were scattered and uncoordinated. The company decided to unify its AI adoption under a single umbrella.

“Our challenge is to apply the same rigour, news judgment, and checks and balances that a top-class editor would bring.”

Nalin Mehta on using AI in the newsroom.

“...where AI becomes the engine driving different brand strategies at multiple levels — technology, product, journalism, editorial, and video,” explains Mehta.

Easing this transition is Answers, Network18’s proprietary agentic AI — a self-learning tool capable of making autonomous decisions — now being deployed across the network.

Unlike Network18 and India more broadly, Mehta believes Western newsrooms are taking a more cautious approach to AI. “They’re afraid it might take away jobs or cause unintended harm,” he says. He acknowledges that the technology is far from flawless. “AI can misinterpret data,” he admits. “It’s not a perfect solution.”

However, Mehta insists that good journalists have no excuse for making mistakes with AI. “People come to Network18 brands because they trust the vigilance we exercise over everything we publish,” he says.

Artificial intelligence in the newsroom 

Most recently, Network18 deployed AI during its IPL coverage, using it to generate match reports based on real-time data points. “It frees up my reporters to focus on what only they can do: getting the exclusive,” says Mehta. The same goes for markets coverage too. 

Despite its promise, AI still requires human oversight. Mehta recalls how one of Network18’s AI agents once confused the closing time of the Bombay Stock Exchange with that of the New York Stock Exchange. It was a small error with significant implications in financial journalism.

Then there are geopolitical sensitivities that popular large language models often overlook, such as referring to Kashmir as "India- or Pakistan-administered" instead of simply "Kashmir", a phrasing that can misalign with local editorial standards.

“We will obviously have very intense training programmes across our newsrooms for adopting AI.”

Nalin Mehta

“Our challenge is to apply the same rigour, news judgment, and checks and balances that a top-class editor would bring,” says Mehta. He adds that nothing AI generates is published without human supervision in Network18 newsrooms. 

All of this underscores the need for proprietary AI tools trained on Indian datasets, something Network18 has been actively developing. “So, Agent Veda handles a range of video-related tasks. We use Narad for writing and editing. Mona, which we’re building for personalisation, is still evolving. And Bharat focuses on multilingual content,” says Mehta. “Each of these is in a different stage of development.”

Getting people on board 

Journalists are, by nature, a sceptical bunch. Add to that the fear of job loss that AI has stirred, and it’s no surprise they approach the technology with a fair degree of suspicion.

So far, though, Mehta says he hasn’t encountered serious pushback from his newsroom. “We’re seeing AI as an aid for journalists,” he says.

What about training? “We will obviously have very intense training programmes across our newsrooms for adopting AI,” he says. The focus, he adds, won’t be on explaining what AI is or how to use it in theory, but on how it integrates with the content management system (CMS). “That’s where we need to train people. That’s where we need to build guardrails.”

AI won’t kill journalism. But it might force it to evolve. And in that evolution, between speed and soul, efficiency and ethics, lies the defining battle of modern media. Whether Frankenstein or Astro Boy wins out may not just shape our news, but our sense of what it means to be informed, and human.