Following the launch of two Generative AI pilots on the BBC News website and app in recent weeks and a successful pilot to use Gen AI to add subtitles to programmes on BBC Sounds, our latest trial will explore how new Gen AI tools could enable us to provide a valuable, tailored service for football fans on BBC Sounds and BBC Sport.
What is My Club Daily and how will it work?
The BBC’s ‘My Club Daily’ pilot will run for four weeks from the start of the new football season, offering regular and bespoke audio bulletins for fans of five English clubs – Liverpool, Aston Villa, Newcastle United, Southampton and Plymouth Argyle.
The audio update will provide a summary of the day’s news for fans of Liverpool, Aston Villa and Newcastle, and twice weekly updates about Southampton and Plymouth. These teams have been chosen to test how well the pilot works in different parts of the country across a range of divisions.
The updates will be produced with the assistance of GenAI tools that:
- organise and reformat existing BBC articles about the clubs to produce a draft audio script, and then
- generate an audio recording of the script using a synthetic (AI) voice.
Each draft script and recording will be checked for accuracy by our editorial team before the completed update is published, and we will clearly highlight our use of AI to listeners in line with the BBC’s AI transparency commitments.
We will be using ChatGPT to produce the draft audio scripts and ElevenLabs to generate the synthetic voices.
The updates will be published on BBC Sounds at 5pm each day. To get the latest episode you can listen to your club’s feed on BBC Sounds to find the feed just search Liverpool FC; Aston Villa; Newcastle United; Southampton FC, or Plymouth Argyle on the BBC Sounds app. During the pilot, links to the updates will also be available on the BBC Sport app and website, and on BBC social media accounts.
The use of AI tools in sport production
While it’s clear AI tools can support production workflows in many new ways, this pilot relies exclusively on the work of BBC journalists working across BBC Sport and BBC Local. The AI tools will not create stories – as this is not permitted by the BBC under our AI guidelines. Instead, the tools will reformat existing BBC stories that have already been produced by our expert editorial teams.
However, the cost of making a bespoke daily audio bulletin for every major club using our existing approach would be prohibitively expensive. So, we’re exploring if AI could enable us to do this in a cost-effective way – by rapidly repurposing existing information produced by our colleagues for our tv, radio and online services.
The reformatting of existing content allows even more people to enjoy it. For example, football fans with visual impairments might prefer to listen rather than read the latest updates from their club.
The effectiveness and scalability of this approach will be tested during the course of the pilot.
The use of synthetic voice by the BBC
The use of synthetic voice on BBC services is being carefully managed and we have already published Editorial Guidance on its use in content-making. Any proposed use always requires a robust editorial justification and must support the BBC’s editorial standards and values.
In this case, the pilot will explore whether the use of synthetic voice can be deployed to create new, more personalised content experiences, and to test how users respond to them. This will build on the work and learning from other AI pilots – for example, we already use synthetic AI voices on the BBC Weather app to provide highly-localised weather forecasts throughout the day and to support our output on smart speakers.
Our presenters and reporters are vital to the success of all our radio and audio networks, and we have no plans to deploy synthetic voices routinely. The new Gen AI tools are impressive, but they will never be able to replicate the depth, humour or humanity of our presenter-led programming in sport or any other genre. The close connection between our presenters and listeners is as the heart of our trusted relationship with licence fee-payers, and will remain so.
