A personal note: On Tuesday, 28th April, three months ago, I posted on LinkedIn that I had started building Understories, a prototype at the intersection of communications and AI, as a research pilot. Since then, many people, including you, have engaged with the tool or with me, tested a message, replied, or reached out. To everyone who engaged: thank you.

Caroline - 28 July 2026

—————————————

1 . What the numbers show

Visitors from 53 countries, including new additions since last month: Algeria, Denmark, Egypt, Ethiopia, Hungary, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Malta, Norway, the Philippines, South Korea, Sweden, and Türkiye. Traffic remains uneven, with the UK, US, and France accounting for over 50% of visits.

• The most visited pages are the Homepage (37%), The Library (18%), and Test Your Message (8%).

• Feedback from the field. I presented Understories to 50+ practitioners at an AI and comms-focused session hosted by a group of climate communicators, also featuring Travis Coan, Professor of Computational Social Science (University of Exeter). Key feedback: expanding the research geographic reach southward — echoing a gap I'm already working to close, making the rewriting feature optional for users who want scoring without rephrasing, and integrating a campaign strategy layer upstream of messaging, since a message only lands if the strategy around it does too. I plan to address these points.

2. The tech and its surprises

The “Test Your Message” phase is on a Summer Break. The tool is currently paused to prepare for the upgrade. Contrary to my initial plan, I won’t hire a RAG developer and will re-engineer the tool myself — designing, reading, iterating, and learning as I go. Wish me luck:) A few points:

• Infrastructure shift: Moving the prototype from a US-hosted and built stack to an open-source, more EU-sovereign stack to align with transparency and ethical values. It was the expected plan at this exact step. 

• New enriched architecture: Enabling dynamic retrieval from a growing, citation-grounded research library. Adding agent observability and language precision. The pipeline is designed to embed Understories in workflows and make it adaptable, in addition to being a standalone tool.

Side note: The EU AI Act’s Article 50 (transparency obligations), enforceable from 2 August 2026, has two key provisions: Art. 50(1): Users must be informed when interacting with AI, unless obvious from context. Art. 50(4): AI-generated text on matters of public interest must be disclosed as AI-assisted, unless human editorial review takes responsibility.

3 . Perspective from the outside

Conversation with a US-Based Public Opinion Expert. I built Understories in English with an international scope in mind, knowing the US is a super dynamic hub for climate research and tech. Last month, I spoke with a US-based expert whose insights I’ve partly added to the FAQ page. Other points of interest:

• Personalisation is the foundation for communications work: when it comes to press pitching, some reporters are more reactive to certain words. The “journalists” audience is made up of multiple audiences. How do you address this? 

Caroline: The tool helps with the last-mile connection, but human intervention is key for trust and resonance. Conservative and progressive journalists require tailored approaches.

• The US climate communications landscape is organised around the “Global Warming’s Six Americas” framework. This requires an audience sub-division too. Especially the “Alarmed” and the “Concerned,” whose combined share increased from 41% in 2015 to 52% in 2025.

Caroline: The segmentation of “general public” is super relevant. The “Six Americas” work developed by Yale Program on Climate Change Communication in 40 languages is central to Understories’ research library. It’s a case study of customising and embedding the tool.

• For the international picture, “Global Warming’s Six Audiences Around the World” intersects with research on emissions and income levels. Building personas can guide messaging: “Here’s our typical donor,” etc. 

Caroline: Super interesting! External profiling and internal profiling are sophisticated. I will definitely look into it.

—————————————

On Ethics and Environment

There is a new initiative I think is precious; it launched online and in London two weeks ago, celebrating women shaping Ethical Intelligence: The Godmothers of AI: “a platform dedicated to amplifying women's voices across AI, technology, art, culture, and society”. Worth a read: Why Humanity Needs the Godmothers of AI and Wait, What Are We Legislating?

—————————————

4 . What’s next

• Reopening the Test Phase: The upgraded version should be live in September 2026. I hope to test different orchestrations in August and then work on the interface with a web designer. Once automatic and ambient, the post-pilot will be the real version 1 of Understories.

• Methodology Paper: I’m writing a paper explaining how Understories works, re: how a message moves through the system and why a score lands where it does, including: workflow architecture, citation-grounded rigor, decision-making principles. Thank you to the researchers and practitioners who have already agreed to review it.

——

The monthly update is shared by email first to users, researchers, AI and comms practitioners I happen to meet while building Understories.

I publish every other Thursday, a "newsletter" you can subscribe to: The Reading List. It's made of short explainers, key findings, and data points from selected reports as they go live, plus exclusive content.