A narrative history of JECT.AI.
JECT.AI started on a park bench, during a chat between a technologist and a senior journalist. The technologist was working on new digital tech to support people to be more creative and inventive at work. This tech was already being rolled out in different domains, from manufacturing to social care. But not in journalism, said the senior journalist. A simple idea took root.
Proof of concept
This simple idea found support from others. Funding from the Google News Initiative led to a first proof of concept that was co-designed with journalists. The proof of concept was successful. A consortium of European technologists and news organisations was formed, and bid for EU H2020 funding to take the concept to the next level. The result was a project that involved refining the digital tool throughout 2017 and 2018. The tool was evaluated in newsrooms in Scandinavia, and increased the content, novelty and value of the stories written by journalists who used it.
JECT.AI start-up
In 2020 the JECT.AI start-up was formed with investment from EIT Digital. Three partners – City, University of London, Digital Catapult and WAN-IFRA – extended the digital product and refined the business offering. The product, now called JECT.AI, was rolled out to dozens of newsrooms. We at JECT.AI are looking forward to a positive future for our technology.
Reach out to us at info@staging-jectai.kinsta.cloudÂ
The team
At JECT.AI our team combines technical, creative and business expertise.
Our core team profiles are below:
Prof. Neil Maiden
CO-FOUNDER & CHIEF PRODUCT OFFICER
Neil is Professor of Digital Creativity at the the Business School (formerly Cass) of City University London.
His research investigates uses of artificial intelligence to augment human creativity in professional work.
He is Director of the National Centre for Creativity enabled by AI funded by Research England. Neil has published over 220 peerreviewed papers in academic journals, conferences
Dr. Konstantinos Zachos
CO-FOUNDER & CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER
Kos is a Research Fellow at the Business School (formerly Cass) of City University London. He is Chief Technology Officer of the National Centre for Creativity enabled by AI.Â
Kos has been involved in research and development in the areas of computer science and creativity with a focus on designing and developing digital creativity tools to reinforce learning in creative problem solving.
