Accessible election information thanks to AI: RTVE Elecciones

The Technology Strategy department of RTVE, Spain’s public broadcaster, launched an innovative proof of concept that used artificial intelligence to automatically generate election content in real time.

At Monoceros Labs, we contributed our experience in conversational AI and speech synthesis (TTS) to make the information more accessible, through news read by synthetic voices, available on RTVE IA, and a conversational experience on Alexa.

The challenge

The project aimed to:

• Automatically generate election content in real time from the vote counts,
• Cover nearly 5,000 towns in Spain with fewer than 1,000 inhabitants,
• Make the information accessible through voice and conversation,
• Ensure the information was accurate and reliable,
• Maintain journalistic quality with professional oversight.

Our solution

Designing and developing synthetic voices

We created three Spanish synthetic voices, each with a unique identity, for the project:

• Two voices (male and female) for reading the news.
• A female voice with a conversational style for the dialog on Alexa.
• All the voices were generated with generative AI, blending characteristics of different voices with a news-reading style, without the final identity being recognizable.

Technical features

The voices were developed with special attention to:

• Accurate pronunciation of towns and political parties, with a specialized phonetic dictionary.
• A clear, professional narration style.
• Audio quality optimized for different platforms (web and Alexa).

A live Alexa skill

We developed the “RTVE Elecciones Inteligencia Artificial” voice app, which lets you:

• Listen to live news with a summary of the count and the final result in each town.
• Look up results by town.
• Check the status of the count.
• Follow the results of specific parties.

Try the skill live by saying “Alexa, abre elecciones inteligencia artificial.”

Proofs of concept

Two proofs of concept were run in 2023, one for the municipal elections on May 28 and another for the general election on July 23.

Results and impact

Content generation

In the 2023 municipal elections (May 28):

• About 20,000 news audio clips generated during the vote count, from 9 p.m. to 11:59 p.m.
• More than 300 hours of content.
• Nearly 150,000 audio clips generated for the conversation on Alexa.
• A total of 400 hours of audio for Alexa alone.

In the 2023 general election (July 23):

• Nearly 60,000 news audio clips generated on the night of the vote count.
• About 1,000 hours of audio produced over 3 hours.
• More than 500,000 audio clips generated for the conversation on Alexa.
• More than 1,500 hours of audio for the conversational experience.

Recognition

The project has been recognized for its innovation and social impact:

• Award at the third edition of the TM Broadcast awards, “Best AI implementation project” category (in Spanish).
• IBC 2023 Social Impact Award.

What’s new about it

The project stands out for several reasons:

• Real-time news generation: automatic content production during the vote count, scaling personalized news to more than 1,000 towns.
• Multimodality: information accessible by voice and text, so anyone can look it up in an accessible way.
• Unique voices: generative AI to create custom voices, with a news style tailored to the use case.
• Scale: a system able to generate a large volume of audio in real time, specifically 1,000 hours of audio during three hours of counting, reaching where people can’t.
• Accessibility: a focus on making the information available to everyone, regardless of where they live, how they prefer to consume information, audio or text, or which medium they use to stay informed, the web or devices like Alexa.

Multidisciplinary collaboration

The project involved:

• RTVE: editorial direction and journalistic oversight.
• University of Granada: support for the Alexa conversational experience through the RTVE-UGR Chair.
• University of Castilla-La Mancha: academic expertise in journalism.
• ONCE (the Spanish National Organization of the Blind): accessibility advice.
• Monoceros Labs: design and development of unique synthetic voices with generative AI, and the conversational experience with conversational AI tools on Alexa.
• Narrativa: AI generation of the news texts.

Social impact

This project is a significant step forward in:

• Democratizing election information.
• Accessibility for people with visual impairments.
• News coverage in less populated areas.
• Innovation in public service broadcasting.

More information

The project shows how technology can make information more accessible and democratic, especially at events as important as elections. Combining AI, synthetic voices and conversation design made it possible to build a service that brings election information to more citizens in an innovative, effective way.

• rtveia.es (in Spanish)
• Monoceros Labs blog post about the project.

This project is part of RTVE’s innovation initiatives and involved the collaboration of several institutions and companies.