We’re excited to announce the launch of NewsWhip AI Agents, the world's first real-time media monitoring tool. This marks a significant evolution in how you manage media monitoring transforming the speed, accuracy, and ease with which you can prepare and respond to emerging stories and issues impacting your brand.
Why AI? What are the benefits?
Media monitoring has become increasingly challenging. News cycles are faster, sources more fragmented, and reputational stakes higher than ever. Traditional tools can’t keep pace in an environment where minutes matter and it’s no longer feasible to manually monitor and triage at scale.
NewsWhip AI Agents are specifically designed for this environment, providing instant, analyst-quality alerts that not only highlight emerging stories but determine whether they’re worth your attention, cutting through the noise to deliver only what matters and why.
Real-time clarity: Identify and assess critical changes in interest as they happen.
Scalable efficiency: Expand your monitoring capabilities without additional headcount.
Actionable insights: Understand not just what’s happening, but its significance and potential impact.
How do AI Agents work?
NewsWhip AI Agents are intelligent, autonomous systems built to monitor the Timeline widget of a specific search. Every few minutes, they scan for meaningful changes in public or media interest. When a noticeable shift occurs, the Agent investigates the top articles driving that moment, identifies the likely cause, and decides whether it is relevant to your brand or topic. If so, it sends a structured alert with clear context on what changed, why it matters, and how it is evolving.
This monitor, investigate, decide, and alert sequence is what sets Agents apart. Unlike traditional alerts that rely on fixed thresholds, Agents apply judgment in real time. They help you stay informed without flooding your inbox with noise.
Built upon the success of AI Digests and Top Themes, Agents use trusted NewsWhip data and advanced AI capabilities to deliver contextual, actionable intelligence. They keep your team informed, focused, and ready to respond.
1. Ongoing Topics or Brands
Ideal for tracking continuous subjects such as brand-related issues or broader industry trends. Agents can monitor topics, flagging only meaningful shifts in public and media interest.
Reduce noise: Only receive alerts when significant developments occur.
Save time: No need to manually analyze every fluctuation. Agents do the heavy lifting.
Stay informed: Clearly understand why interest has shifted and how it's relevant.
2. Live Issues or Events
Critical for time-sensitive events like product launches, earnings reports, or crises like recalls or influencer backlash. Agents can monitor live situations, detecting surges in public and media interest, highlighting geographical escalation, and alerting you with comparative context.
Immediate notification: Receive structured, contextual updates at the earliest sign of change.
Proactive insights: Understand escalation clearly and prepare your responses confidently.
Focused attention: Keep stakeholders informed without manual dashboard diving.
Integrating AI Agents into your workflow
This is just the beginning. As we further refine and expand the capabilities of AI Agents, you'll see continuous improvements in relevance, depth of insight, and automation. We recommend adopting Agents alongside your existing alerts and digests to build trust and familiarity:
- Digests are for reflection (looking back at key summaries).
- Agents are for immediate response (alerting forward to emerging risks).
Initially, we suggest running AI Agents in parallel with traditional workflows. As you become confident in their capabilities, you can gradually shift towards a more autonomous approach. You can choose to gradually add other recipients to receive these alerts.
Getting started and best practices
To maximize the effectiveness of your AI Agents:
- Leverage recent additions like Keyword Blocks to refine your searches and Source Lists to prioritize alerts for critical sources.
- Run Agents alongside existing processes at first, gradually increasing reliance as trust grows.
- Regularly review and adjust search criteria and agent settings, such as sensitivity levels, based on initial alert quality.
NewsWhip's application of AI and GPT-technology
NewsWhip adheres to the guidelines set by the CIPR, reflecting our commitment to upholding the highest standards of ethical AI use.
FAQs – Understanding AI Agents
Q: What is an AI Agent exactly?
An AI Agent is an intelligent system that proactively monitors topics or events in real-time. Unlike standard alerts, Agents actively investigate shifts in media interest and determine whether they warrant your immediate attention. They function like analysts, providing structured, contextual updates rather than just notifications.
Q: How are AI Agents different from AI Digests?
Generally, Digests are retrospective and reflective, whilst Agents are forward-looking and responsive.
AI Agents actively monitor in real-time and alert proactively. They help you respond immediately to emerging risks or changes.
AI Digests provide scheduled summaries of past activity, helping you review and understand broader trends after the fact.
Q: When should I use the ‘Live Issue or Event’ setting vs. ‘Ongoing Topic or Brand’?
Use Live Issue or Event for time-sensitive scenarios with a specific start date such as product recalls, campaigns, earnings reports, or crisis management. It monitors at shorter intervals for swift, proactive responses.
Use Ongoing Topic or Brand to continuously track industry topics, brand monitoring, or long-term narratives. It reduces alert noise by surfacing only substantial shifts in public and media interest.
Q: How does the ‘What’s this search about?’ field affect my Agent?
This field is automatically pulled from the name of the search used to create your Agent. The Agent uses this name to understand and assess relevance when a spike in public interest occurs. It’s essential the name clearly reflects your monitoring goal (e.g., "Tesla Recall") for best results.
Q: How does the ‘Your company or team’ field affect my Agent?
This field is automatically filled from your account information for efficiency. The Agent uses this alongside your other information to evaluate whether emerging issues are relevant to your company or brand.
For example, if your company is Renault and your search is for Renault Group, the Agent assesses media spikes against how relevant they are specifically to Renault, as opposed to general industry news.
Q: Can we have more than one Agent per search?
No, each Agent is linked directly to a single search to ensure clarity and consistency in monitoring. If you have multiple critical searches, set up separate Agents for each.
FAQs – Getting the Most Out of Your Agent
Q: Can I adjust the Agent’s sensitivity?
Yes, sensitivity settings let you adjust how proactive the Agent is:
High sensitivity: More frequent alerts; minor shifts in interest may trigger investigations.
Low sensitivity: Fewer alerts; Agent only responds to highly significant changes.
Sensitivity adjustment helps you balance alert frequency with your monitoring needs.
Q: How often do Agents check for updates?
Agents continuously run every few minutes to detect meaningful changes as quickly as possible.
Q: What does the Agent consider a “meaningful” change?
Agents use adaptive logic, not fixed thresholds, to detect changes. They compare current activity against recent patterns, considering natural fluctuations like time of day or typical volume changes. A spike must significantly stand out in context to trigger an investigation.
Importantly, this context is specific to your search. That means the Agent can still detect meaningful changes in low-interest or niche topics.
Q: What is ‘Overall Brand Conversation’ and how do I use it?
This is like a Share of Voice metric which shows how your current monitored search (e.g., “Tesla Recall”) compares in percentage to broader brand searches (e.g., all “Tesla” mentions). To utilize this feature effectively:
- Ensure you have a general search of your entire brand for comparison.
- Add this broader search when setting up your Agent to provide comparative context.
Q: What are ‘Priority Publishers’?
Priority Publishers refers to a curated list of high-importance publishers or sources your team identifies as crucial created using Source Lists. Alerts triggered by articles from these sources may be prioritized. Please be aware these may impact alert frequency depending on how extensive this list is (e.g., 5 key publishers vs. 50 publishers).
Q: Can I forward Agent alerts to stakeholders or executives?
Yes. You can directly add stakeholders as recipients of alerts, or simply forward received emails. Alerts are structured clearly, enabling stakeholders to quickly understand the issue without needing additional reports or context.
Q: What should I do if I receive irrelevant or repetitive alerts?
If alerts seem irrelevant, it often means your underlying search criteria might be too broad or not clearly defined. Try refining your searches, relying on proven Keyword Blocks or clearer search terms, to help resolve this.
If you experience repetitive alerts, please share feedback. Our team continuously adjusts the Agent logic to reduce duplication over time.
Q: Will I miss critical updates if the Agent doesn’t alert?
Agents are designed with cautionary guardrails, prioritizing important alerts. Initially, continue manual monitoring alongside Agents to build trust and ensure important updates are consistently caught.
Q: How can I trust AI Agent alerts?
We recommend initially running AI Agents alongside existing monitoring processes. Once confident they consistently alert to meaningful issues, you can gradually transition to relying more heavily on them. Agents are extensively tested and continuously refined for accuracy.
FAQs – How It Works Behind the Scenes
Q: Does NewsWhip use my data to train AI models?
No. Your data is never used to train our AI models. Alerts and analysis are generated based solely on real-time, publicly available media coverage relevant to your defined topics.
Q: What data does the Agent access when investigating?
Only the following field details are used, both of which you can adjust or remove:
- What’s this search about? (e.g., Renault Group)
- Your company or team (e.g., Renault)
No other personal or proprietary data from your account is accessed.
Q: How do Agents handle syndicated content to avoid false alerts?
The Agent is designed to recognize syndicated articles and currently employs strategies to minimize repetitive alerts. We are continuously improving this to better handle syndicated content, and feedback from users will be critical in refining this capability.
Q: How does NewsWhip ensure accuracy and minimize hallucinations?
Our AI prompts are strictly controlled to reduce inaccuracies or irrelevant content (hallucinations). All insights are grounded in real articles and clearly linked, allowing verification directly from the source.
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