Briefly News' Rianette Cluley Takes Legit's AI Playbook to INMA Africa Summit

• Rianette Cluley, Media Project Manager at Briefly News and TUKO.co.ke, represented Legit as a speaker at INMA's Africa Newsroom & Tech Summit 2026
• Her session traced Legit's newsroom AI journey from a shared ChatGPT account in 2023 to the custom tools Marfeel CoPilot and Pressroom, now used across all four Legit brands
• A featured case study showed one Briefly News writer's weekly pageviews climb by 157% after he began using AI-assisted workflows

Rianette Cluley, Media Project Manager at Briefly News and TUKO.co.ke, spoke at the INMA Africa Newsroom & Tech Summit 2026, sharing how Legit's four newsrooms have built AI into daily reporting without losing the human judgement at the centre of the work.

The virtual summit, hosted by the International News Media Association (INMA), convened newsroom, product, and technology leaders from across Africa to discuss reinventing newsrooms for the digital age. Rianette Cluley's session, titled "How Legit's Newsrooms Are Embracing AI to Streamline Work Processes," walked delegates through Legit's tools, case studies, and lessons learned from conception to publication and social distribution.

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Early AI Adoption Brought Real Growing Pains

Rianette Cluley traced Legit's AI journey back to 2022, when the group began experimenting with prompts and setting usage restrictions after ChatGPT's public release. In 2025, three Briefly News contractors joined the Thomson Reuters Foundation's AI in the Newsroom Mentorship Programme, a turning point Cluley credited with reshaping the group's approach.

She was candid about the setbacks. Legit's first custom tool, EditorialEye, was hard-launched across all four brands on a single shared ChatGPT account, which led to glitches, hallucinated errors, and writers losing more time hunting for problems that did not exist. The tool was costly to scale, and the workflow was not built with the user in mind.

Those lessons produced a six-step process now used for every new tool: identify a need, research options, collect feedback, trial with a small control group, optimise, then roll out to the wider team.

One Writer's Turnaround Made the Case for AI

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One of the strongest pieces of evidence Cluley offered was a case study on a Briefly News hard-news reporter she called Tim, who struggled with clean copy, sourcing experts, and adapting hard news for social platforms. After he began using AI support for copy editing, expert-finding, and headline packaging in August 2024, his weekly pageviews rose by 157%.

By 2025, with Marfeel CoPilot and the article-drafting tool Pressroom in place, Tim had moved from one shared account to his own, cutting the tab-switching and login friction that had slowed him down. He credited the tools with letting him cover and write more stories, cut errors, and improve his work-life balance.

Cluley also shared how Legit uses AI to track each writer's return on investment, weighing revenue generated against pay to flag underperforming output early and guide writers back to a positive return.

Rianette Cluley's Own AI Track Record Runs Deep

Rianette Cluley brings her own AI background to the role. She attended the Journalism AI Academy powered by the Google News Initiative, sat on an AI-focused panel at WAN-IFRA, and completed the Thomson Reuters Foundation's AI in the Newsroom Mentorship Programme in 2025. Briefly News reported on that selection for the Thomson Reuters Foundation programme at the time, calling it recognition of her leadership on AI in journalism.

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It is not Cluley's first turn addressing the subject publicly. Briefly News readers may recall her free webinar on the ethical use of AI, where she drew on her Journalism AI Academy training to walk attendees through practical tools and the ethical questions that come with them.

Cluley closed her INMA session with a call to newsroom leaders across the continent: identify a genuine need before adopting any tool, involve the newsroom in choosing it, and treat collaboration with industry peers as essential to getting AI adoption right.

About Legit

Legit is a digital news and entertainment media holding company in Sub-Saharan Africa. The group comprises four brands: Legit.ng in Nigeria, TUKO.co.ke in Kenya, YEN.com.gh in Ghana, and Briefly News in South Africa, reaching a combined 43 million monthly pageviews and 40 million social media followers through a team of over 350.

Source: Briefly News