JournalismAI Innovation Challenge, supported by the Google News Initiative
Enabling publishers to experiment, implement and share best practices of AI technologies
The JournalismAI Innovation Challenge, supported by the Google News Initiative, was a programme to fund projects from a wide range of news publishers to foster AI literacy and implementation through targeted innovation and experimentation.
This nine-month-long programme was designed by the JournalismAI team at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) and supported by the Google.
The Innovation Challenge has funded 47 news organisations in 28 countries to build AI prototypes and integrate them into their newsroom workflows.
How the Innovation Challenge worked
• Grants: selected publishers received funding to experiment with AI on a challenge specific to their newsroom.
• Nine months of building: each grantee developed a prototype and integrated it into its newsroom workflows.
• Sharing what works: grantees documented their journeys, challenges and lessons in case studies, open to the whole industry.
Explore case studies from the 2025 cohort
The 2025 Innovation Challenge Report, Prompting Sustainability, collects case studies from all 12 grantees and reveals their journeys, challenges, and opportunities.
Read about their experiences, discover best practices, and find inspiration in their innovative approaches to integrating AI into journalism.
Explore case studies from the 2024 cohort
The culmination of the inaugural JournalismAI Innovation Challenge, supported by the Google News Initiative is this report: AI and the newsroom next door. It is a collection of case studies for small and medium-sized newsrooms navigating the AI landscape anywhere in the world.
This comprehensive report, drawing from all 35 grantees who participated in the first JournalismAI Innovation Challenge, reveals their journeys, challenges, and opportunities.
Organisations that have participated in the JournalismAI Innovation Challenge
The JournalismAI Innovation Challenge, supported by the Google News Initiative, is organised by the JournalismAI team at Polis – the journalism think-tank at the London School of Economics and Political Science, and it is powered by the Google News Initiative.
