This article analyses the response of European Public Service Media to the crisis caused by Covid-19, especially the impact of the pandemic on Europe’s major public broadcasters, with a particular focus on technical and professional constraints, alterations in audience volume and habits, production strategies, type of broadcast content and journalists’ routines. The research is based on public information from the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) and 19 in-depth, structured interviews with a convenience sample of innovation and strategy managers from public broadcasters in Austria (ORF), Belgium (VRT and RTBF), Denmark (DR), Finland (YLE), France (France TV), Germany (ARD and ZDF), Great Britain (BBC), Ireland (RTÉ), Italy (RAI), Netherlands (NPO), Portugal (RTP), Spain (RTVE), Sweden (SVT), Switzerland (RTS) and the European Broadcasting Union (EBU). The results indicate that the corporate projection of PSM was increased by emphasising their role as essential services and their defence of the values that characterise them. The pandemic forced the adaptation of programme production from technical standards to an emotional approach, accelerating a formal hybridisation with native online contents. Dependence on software grew and newsmaking processes were altered towards ‘remote journalism’. Changes are drawn that may be maintained in the future.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is one of the most promising innovation frameworks with the potential to transform our relationship with technology. Particularly in journalism, AI is beginning to make its way transversally into the news production process and into the structure and functioning of the media. This article aims to anticipate how AI will impact on the Spanish media ecosystem and explain the medium-term transformations that are already being felt. The research approach is of an exploratory and descriptive nature, with a qualitative methodology based on Delphi-like in-depth interviews, encompassing an intentional sample of academic representatives, relevant associations and leading companies in the field of technology and communication. The results point out that AI will allow the extension of the current automated text news to audio and video on demand, it will favour that news can have a non-linear unstructured consumption, it will promote changes in the business model through new ways of relating with the audience and distribution of the product. Also, variations in the professional profile with a less operative journalist who will avoid routines –even of personal nature– that can be imitated by the machine and increase its cognitive contribution to the news production.

Deepfakes, one of the most novel forms of misinformation, have become a real challenge in the communicative environment due to their spread through online news and social media spaces. Although fake news have existed for centuries, its circulation is now more harmful than ever before, thanks to the ease of its production and dissemination. At this juncture, technological development has led to the emergence of deepfakes, doctored videos, audios or photos that use artificial intelligence. Since its inception in 2017, the tools and algorithms that enable the modification of faces and sounds in audiovisual content have evolved to the point where there are mobile apps and web services that allow average users its manipulation. This research tries to show how three renowned media outlets—<em>The Wall Street Journal</em>,<em> The Washington Post</em>,<em> </em>and<em> Reuters</em>—and three of the biggest Internet-based companies—Google, Facebook, and Twitter—are dealing with the spread of this new form of fake news. Results show that identification of deepfakes is a common practice for both types of organizations. However, while the media is focused on training journalists for its detection, online platforms tended to fund research projects whose objective is to develop or improve media forensics tools.

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