News Corp Australia launches AI audio across its major news brands

News Corp Australia today announced a bold step into the future of journalism, rolling out text-to-speech audio across its major news brands.

With this launch, millions of readers now have the option to listen to the news, not just read it - changing how audiences connect with their news content every day.

A new way to engage with the news

The listen function is now live across both web and app on titles including The Australian, news.com.au, The Daily Telegraph, Herald Sun, The Courier-Mail, The Advertiser, The Mercury, NT News, Cairns Post, Gold Coast Bulletin, Toowoomba Chronicle, Townsville Bulletin, Geelong Advertiser, The Weekly Times, and CODE Sports.

Enabled on thousands of articles each week, the rollout spans key categories from news and sport to business, entertainment, opinion, health, and education.

The voices of the newsroom

News Corp Australia worked hand-in-hand with BeyondWords to develop brand-specific voices cloned from their journalists. The hyper-realistic clones represent their newsrooms, allowing each title to have their own unique voice.

As Rod Savage, Director of Newsroom Innovation at News Corp Australia, explains:

“The ability to use AI technology to offer brand-specific voices of journalists – which sound remarkably realistic – and automatically enable audio for thousands of our articles will change how our audience connects with our content.”

Seamless listening, anywhere

Adopting the BeyondWords player and app SDKs, News Corp Australia offers their readers an experience that is designed to fit naturally into modern news habits.  

Readers can listen while commuting, doing chores, or whilst browsing elsewhere on their devices, giving them new ways to consume content, on their terms. Default controls allow them to adjust playback speed and skip forwards and backwards through paragraphs. 

Powered by BeyondWords

News Corp Australia worked with BeyondWords to build 15 custom Professional voice models and to deliver audio at scale. 

After an initial trial with The Australian, this full rollout is a huge milestone - and just the beginning of what’s possible when publishers combine journalism with AI-powered audio.