A key role of the news media is to give the unheard a voice. In that belief, the Mainichi Shimbun newspaper had published various features for young people on Japan’s absurdly draconian school rules. But a mere 2.5 percent of teenagers read a newspaper. It was time to update the newspaper to better serve young people, without sacrificing our dedication to journalism. We needed to start talking to Gen Zers on social media, in their own language.

The idea was this: use artificial intelligence to turn newspaper articles into rap songs for young people uninterested in newspapers. Then release them on social media in the form of lyric videos.

With an artificial intelligence institute and an advertising agency, the Mainichi Shimbun established the “Mainichi Shimbun AI Rapper News Desk.” This covered topics that Gen Zers wanted to talk about but couldn’t, then wrote articles about them.

Lyrics were extracted from the articles, which our “AI Rapper” analyzed into phonetic elements and infused with a rap-like flow. The resulting song was sung in a synthesized voice, turning the news into a catchy melody while maintaining its impartiality. The newspaper was thus updated from content you read to content you watch. Further, young people’s comments were converted into rap responses to absurd school rules. This gave the newspaper, previously a one-way medium, an interactive character.

Two videos were shared on TikTok and got a total of 2.13 million views and 260,000 likes. The Mainichi Shimbun received a lot of positive feedback, and young people became more engaged with and interested in the news. And they flooded TikTok with their thoughts. The comments section became a lively forum where Gen Zers previously uninterested in newspapers discussed the issues. Our next goal is to further perfect this AI technology. By varying the synthetic voice, we aim to turn the thoughts of people of every stripe into lyrics and convert all sorts of articles into rap songs, so the newspaper can evolve with young people.