The first Vietnamese magazine turns virtual assistants into “Trump cards”

The press is facing a major turning point due to the impact of new technology trends. A survey by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism (UK) showed that 63% of 300 press leaders expressed concern about the sharp decline in traffic from social media sites.

Chartbeat data shows that traffic to news sites from Facebook has decreased by 48%, and this rate is 27% for X (Twitter) in 2023. In response to the change, 77% of newsrooms worldwide said they will focus on developing information channels to bring content directly to readers.

2024: AI will have a major impact on news organizations

According to the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, there are three main trends that will impact journalism in 2024. These are the emergence of many new types of devices such as AR and VR glasses, the explosion of digital platforms, social networks specializing in audio and video, and the third trend is the wave of artificial intelligence (AI).

More and more newsrooms around the world are transforming digitally, through investing in, applying AI and developing data analysis tools. In Vietnam, many press agencies are also following this direction. In particular, Vietnam Economic Magazine (VnEconomy) is currently a pioneer in applying AI and implementing digital publishing.

According to VnEconomy Editor-in-Chief Dao Quang Binh, if the press economy is to develop, the first thing that newsrooms must solve is content distribution. This is similar to business people, who must find ways to sell, that is, calculate the output of the product.

Previously, the editorial office had to print the paper newspaper and then transport it to the newsstands. Distribution accounted for more than half of the revenue from newspaper sales, while reaching customers directly was difficult. To solve this problem, VnEconomy brought the product to readers in digital form, through digital platforms.

The magazine is currently selling a service package including 52 issues in .pdf format, on the PostEnp paid press platform of the Central Press Distribution Company. Thanks to the electronic version, VnEconomy does not have to spend money on printing, but can reach global customers without additional costs.

To attract readers, the service package also includes Askonomy - a virtual assistant, specializing in answering economic information. Askonomy is a value-added item, also the core of the journalism economic model that VnEconomy aims for.

Using virtual assistants as business consulting tools

First launched in March 2023, Askonomy is a virtual assistant built on a large language model. Askonomy 2024 version is a Vietnamese product, with source code and data completely located on domestic servers.

Askonomy’s target users are officials, assistants, business people, entrepreneurs, policy makers, students, etc. who are interested in the Vietnamese economy. Because it supports both Vietnamese and English, foreign investors can also use this chatbot as a reference information channel.

Askonomy currently operates on the web. Users who pay to read the newspaper will be granted access to VnEconomy's chatbot. When asked a question, the chatbot will give a specific answer, based on the data content source which is the articles published in the magazine.

According to Mr. Tran Hoai Van, Chief Operating Officer (COO) of Actable AI, the developer of Askonomy, the virtual assistant training data is verified, highly reliable, and continuously updated. Askonomy also has the ability to graph response data in the form of tables. This is the fundamental difference between Askonomy and ChatGPT.

"Information assistants are a completely new press product, a breakthrough in the media industry. This method helps readers switch from reading newspapers to actively asking questions to update information. This model is currently very rare in the world. Even the Financial Times has just announced a chatbot test," Mr. Van shared.

VnEconomy Editor-in-Chief Dao Quang Binh, the “father” of the idea of ​​Askonomy, explained: “Ask means to ask, Askonomy means to ask about economics. A is the first letter in the alphabet, and also the abbreviation of the highest card in a deck of cards (Ace). I hope Askonomy will be like the trump card in the magazine’s development plan.”

Explaining further, Mr. Binh said that when developing the virtual assistant, VnEconomy did not aim to sell accounts to collect money. The first goal was to bring standard content to readers. But the deeper thing that this unit aimed for was to build a community of people who use chatbots to make business decisions.

“Once there is a community, in addition to the revenue from selling newspapers, advertisers will appear. We are pioneering, creating a model that can be replicated in other newspapers. This will be the standard path to solving the problem of journalism economics, a headache for Vietnamese newsrooms,” said Mr. Binh.

Sharing about future plans, according to the General Secretary of the Vietnam Economic Magazine, VnEconomy is integrating AI into both content production and distribution.

For now, Askonomy will summarize important articles, in voice format, following the trend of short content, and then automatically send them to subscribers so that readers can listen in their cars. With the ability to translate Vietnamese - English, VnEconomy will soon launch the first English newspaper automatically translated by specially trained AI.