Have you ever experienced fatigue while scanning through the newsflow trying to find the interesting pieces? Although it might be challenging without any assisting tools, on the other hand, an application suggesting uninteresting articles or not pointing out the important ones is equally annoying. Yle has developed, in collaboration with Reaktor, a world first: the learning news assistant Voitto that provides only relevant recommendations to its users.

Smartphone notifications are a great but delicate way to deliver interesting pieces of information to people. If a user finds some of them unuseful, they quickly become turned off completely. Training an AI solution to provide content based on what a user has previously been reading might be an improvement, but the tailored content may become irrelevant if the user’s areas of interest change.

Yle’s smart assistant Voitto has been developed to counter the challenge by learning not only from consumed content but also from feedback given to it directly on the lock screen. The constant learning process allows Voitto to provide only interesting content and adjust to shifts in preferences. A great effort has been put in to interact with Voitto user-oriented to ensure it is comfortable to use.