Videofy was developed within Schibsted to streamline the production of short news videos for screens and digital platforms. Previously, producing these types of video summaries required significant editorial resources and manual work throughout the day. With Videofy, much of this process can be automated.
The tool pulls content from a published article, generates a script, matches images and video, produces a voiceover, and assembles the final video before it is reviewed by editors.
After using the tool internally to produce thousands of videos, Schibsted is now making a fully functional base version of Videofy available as open source.
“We are open sourcing Videofy because we want to make the technology we have developed internally available to the wider industry. Video is an increasingly important way audiences consume news, but many smaller newsrooms do not have the development resources to build these types of production tools themselves,” says Juan Carlos Lopez Calvet, Director of Data & AI Platform at Schibsted.
Lowers the barrier for innovation
y sharing the technology, Schibsted hopes to lower the barrier for innovation in the media industry and contribute to greater transparency around how artificial intelligence can be used to develop new formats for journalism.
“When this type of technology is shared openly, the industry can develop better solutions faster. At the same time, it is important that these tools are built with editorial safeguards and transparency, so that journalistic principles are maintained,” says Lopez Calvet.
Videofy has previously been used internally in Schibsted newsrooms to convert articles into short video news summaries, including for screens in public spaces and digital platforms. The solution was first developed in VG before being adopted more widely across the group.
Recently, Lopez Calvet also presented Videofy on stage at “Voices – European Festival of Journalism and Media Freedom” in Florence, where he demonstrated how the technology can turn a published article into a finished video news story in just a few minutes.
The open source version of Videofy is now published on GitHub and is intended as a starting point that developers and media organisations can build on.
“Making Videofy available is an invitation to collaborate. We welcome feedback, contributions, and real-world testing from both developers and publishers. The goal is to develop responsible AI tools that strengthen journalism,” says Lopez Calvet.
Watch a demo here:
The code is available here:
https://github.com/schibsted/videofy_minimal
Facts: Videofy
- Videofy is an AI-based tool that converts text-based articles into short news videos.
- The tool pulls content from a published article, generates a script, selects images or video, produces a voiceover, and compiles the final video through an editorial review workflow.
- The technology was developed within Schibsted, originally in VG, and has since been used in several of the group’s newsrooms.
- Schibsted is now making a fully functional base version of Videofy available as open source.
- The solution can be used by developers, media organisations, and others who want to build tools that convert text into video.
