Synapse, the first joint laboratory combining a media organisation and academic research
With the support of the French National Research Agency, Ouest-France, CNRS and the University of Rennes are launching Synapse, the first joint laboratory aimed to interconnect artificial intelligence, the media, press content, journalists and readers.
Synapse will work towards quality journalism, offering readers relevant and even more interactive content. It is designed to remove these technological barriers while maintaining sovereignty over its data and ensuring respect for the rights of people quoted, photographed or recorded within this vast archive.
Synapses will focus on the application of artificial intelligence (AI) in the service of journalism, concentrating on three main aspects:
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The analysis of photographic archives: based on Ouest-France’s 40 million images, Synapses will use AI to search for and analyse photographs, thus facilitating the work of journalists and documentalists.
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The processing of specific texts: the LabCom will draw upon more than 100 years of text archives to improve the understanding and processing of historical texts, overcoming the challenges posed by linguistic evolutions.
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The visualisation of complex information: tools will be developed to visualise complex and interconnected data, making information more readily accessible to journalists.
These areas of research are linked to five major scientific fields: machine learning, computer vision, natural language processing, knowledge representation and complex data visualisation.
explained the team in the presentation of its project to the ANR, which includes Laurent Amsaleg, CNRS research director, head of the LinkMedia team and the project coordinator
To find out more ...
- Press release "AI and the media: Ouest-France, CNRS and the University of Rennes, with the ANR funding, create a joint laboratory"
- (in french only) L'article dans Ouest France IA : « Nous devons conserver notre souveraineté sur nos données ».
Entretien croisé avec Laurent Amsaleg, directeur de recherche au CNRS, et Michel Le Nouy, responsable du domaine informatique « Banques de Contenus » chez Ouest-France.