APA-Text-Assistant
An AI text-editing assistant from APA, Austria's national news agency. It shortens, proofreads and reshapes newsroom and PR copy into headlines, leads, social posts and SEO metadata, inside PR-Desk, NewsDesk or via API. From EUR 25 monthly.
What is APA-Text-Assistant?
The APA-Text-Assistant is an AI assistant for reworking text, published by APA – Austria Presse Agentur eG, the Austrian national news agency. APA is a cooperative that began operating on 1 September 1946 and is owned by Austria's daily newspapers and the public broadcaster ORF. The assistant was announced on 19 February 2024 as part of APA's Trusted AI portfolio, under the motto Recherchieren statt redigieren, research instead of editing, and is presented as a personal assistant for routine content work.
The tool does not write from scratch. It takes copy a journalist or communicator has already produced and transforms it: contextual proofreading, shortening, headline variants, lead variants, social media posts and SEO metadata, plus two beta functions, alt text for images and infographics and data extraction from a text into a table. That makes eight functions in all. APA states that it has packaged its own prompt engineering expertise into the product, so that users need no prompting skills of their own.
There are three routes in. The assistant is a module inside APA's PR-Desk and inside its NewsDesk, it has a dedicated web app at textassistant.newsdesk.apa.at, and it is sold as an API for integration into a third-party production system. Authentication runs through APA's single sign-on. The API route is the only one that offers character-exact shortening.
On the technical side, APA declares GPT-4 at launch and GPT-4o in its June 2025 factsheet, served through Microsoft Azure as a European cloud provider. Billing is deliberately expressed in Abrufe, one request being a single action such as a click on 'shorten' or 'proofread', rather than in tokens, so that the quota stays readable. The three monthly plans differ only in the number of requests they grant: 25, 50 and 250.
The design is explicitly human-in-the-loop: the output is a suggestion and the decision stays with the user. APA assigns prompt engineers, an AI taskforce and a Chief Digital Officer to quality, and publishes an internal AI guideline and a public AI disclaimer. Within APA's AI portfolio the assistant sits alongside, and should not be confused with, CompanyGPT, MediaTopics, Speech-to-Text, APA-PIX, Face-Recognition and AustroBERT.
What it does
- Shorten a text to three preset lengths, or to an exact character count through the API
- Proofread and edit copy in context, beyond what a plain spell checker catches
- Generate headline variants calibrated to a character count and to journalistic criteria
- Generate leads and standfirsts at the length you specify
- Turn an article into a Facebook, X or LinkedIn post, with tone, hashtag and emoji options
- Produce an SEO description, title and keywords
- Generate alt text for images and infographics, and extract data from a text into a table (both beta)
When to use APA-Text-Assistant / When not to
A quick filter to help you decide if APA-Text-Assistant is the right fit.
When to use APA-Text-Assistant
- Newsrooms and desks handling large volumes of agency copy every day, where routine text tasks eat into reporting time.
- PR and communications professionals already using PR-Desk or NewsDesk, who get the assistant as an integrated module with nothing to install.
- Editors working to tight character counts, where headlines, standfirsts and boxed text have to be calibrated to the character.
- Editorial teams that need a European supplier with an Article 28 processing agreement and a named sub-processor.
- Publishers who want text transformation wired into their own production system through the API, the only route offering character-exact shortening.
When not to use APA-Text-Assistant
- Anyone looking for research, fact-checking or news lookups: APA explicitly rules this out, stating that neither the assistant nor the underlying language models hold current or accurate data.
- Writers who need copy created from scratch: the tool transforms text that already exists, it does not invent it.
- Users who would paste sensitive, personal or confidential material, which APA explicitly advises against.
- Teams expecting unsupervised output: every result is a suggestion and the final decision stays with a human.
- Very occasional users needing fewer than 25 requests a month, since the smallest plan is still billed at EUR 25 per month.
How to use APA-Text-Assistant
A typical end-to-end flow, from setup to results.
- If you are already an APA customer, sign in to the NewsDesk (news.newsdesk.apa.at) or the PR-Desk (pr-desk.apa.at) with your usual APA credentials.
- If you are not yet a customer, create an account through APA single sign-on; registration is restricted to adults aged 18 and over under the Digital Terms of Use of 21 April 2026.
- Activate the free trial version, which opens every function.
- Select the 'Text-Assistant' module, or open the dedicated web app at textassistant.newsdesk.apa.at.
- Paste an existing text into the assistant.
- Choose the transformation you want: shortening, proofreading, headline variants, lead variants, a social post, SEO information, alt text or data extraction.
- Set the target length, or the tone, hashtag and emoji options where the function offers them.
- Supply more input text than the output length you are aiming for; APA recommends this to reduce the risk of hallucination.
- Compare the suggestions returned, then read, correct and approve the one you keep.
- For deep integration, consume the service through the API instead, which is the only route that provides character-exact shortening.
Pros & Cons
Pros
- An identified, long-established publisher: the Austrian national news agency, a cooperative since 1946, headquartered in Vienna.
- A named processing chain: the ADV product sheet of July 2025 lists Microsoft Ireland Operations Ltd as the single sub-processor for the Text-Assistant.
- Article 28 processing agreements published as free downloads in German and English for all three group entities, and ISO/IEC 27001:2022 and ISO 20000-1:2018 certificates published in PDF for APA-IT.
- Identification data is never passed to the model provider, and all requests leave through a single APA IP address, producing technical anonymisation.
- APA states that customer data is not used for training purposes.
- Billing in Abrufe rather than tokens, so the monthly quota is readable in advance, and the same features on all three plans.
- Unusual transparency documentation: a free trial with every function open, plus a public factsheet covering the model, retention, bias and hallucinations, and API access for deep integration with character-exact shortening.
Cons
- No permanent free plan: once the trial ends, the entry ticket is EUR 25 per month.
- A tight quota on the entry plan, at 25 requests a month.
- No public API documentation, so you have to go through sales.
- Character-exact shortening is reserved for the API and the Pro function, and two functions are still in beta, alt text and data extraction.
- No mobile app and no browser extension for this product; integrated access assumes an APA account, as the tool is built around the PR-Desk and NewsDesk ecosystem.
- Site and interface are documented in German, and no list of supported languages is published.
- APA acknowledges that hallucinations and bias remain possible and disclaims liability for inputs and outputs; the April 2026 privacy policy and the June 2025 factsheet also describe different model providers, which the watch-outs set out.
Pricing & Plans
There is no permanent free plan. A free trial version is offered, with every function open. Paid access starts at EUR 25.00 per month for the entry plan, with two further monthly tiers at EUR 48.00 and EUR 126.00. Consumption is metered in requests, called Abrufe, a request being a single action such as a click on 'shorten' or 'proofread'; the three tiers grant 25, 50 and 250 requests per month respectively. Prices are displayed on the product page without any statement about VAT. Under the 2026 GTC, fixed prices are invoiced monthly or at least quarterly in advance, variable prices in arrears, with default interest of 1% per month. No public price is published for API access, and no annual discount, promotional code, student or NGO offer is published.
- Small — EUR 25
- - p. M. — 25 Abfragen — for irregular needs
- Regular — EUR 48
- - p. M. — 50 Abfragen — for regular needs
- Large — EUR 126
- - p. M. — 250 Abfragen — for frequent needs
- All three plans include shortening
- headline variants
- social media posts
- proofreading
- SEO information
- data extraction and alt text
- every function open
- with no price attached
- offered as a distribution route
- with no public price
Data, GDPR & hosting
A consolidated view of how APA-Text-Assistant handles your data.
GDPR overview
GDPR compliance is claimed explicitly. A single group-wide privacy policy, dated April 2026, names three controllers under Article 24: APA – Austria Presse Agentur eG (FBN 93359v), APA-IT (FBN 195806a) and APA-Comm (FBN 191528i), all at Laimgrubengasse 10, 1060 Vienna. A data protection officer is appointed and reachable at datenschutzbeauftragte@apa.at. APA states that it complies with the GDPR and the Austrian Telecommunications Act, and lists the Article 13/14 rights: access, rectification, erasure, restriction, portability, withdrawal of consent, objection and complaint to the supervisory authority. Article 28 processing agreements are published for download in German and English for the three entities, plus a supplier agreement. A DSA Article 12 contact point (kontaktstelle@apa.at), an Article 16 reporting form and transparency reports are published. No Article 27 representative is named, the publisher being established in the EU.
Who owns the data?
Under the 2026 GTC, content supplied by the contracting customer remains that customer's property for the duration of the contract. APA states that it provides the Text-Assistant only and that, for contractual services, it acts as a processor (Auftragsverarbeiter) with the customer remaining the controller. The personal data processed for this product is limited to the email address, the IP address and any personal data contained in the text submitted. The legal bases cited are Article 6(1)(b) GDPR for delivering the service and Article 6(1)(f) for storing submitted texts as evidence. The June 2025 factsheet goes further and states that APA processes no personal data beyond making the service available.
Reuse rights
Submitted texts are passed to the language model solely for the conversion the user has requested. Identification data, meaning the email address and the IP address from registration and login, is never transmitted to the model provider at any point, and all requests leave through a single APA IP address, which produces technical anonymisation on the provider's side. APA logs inputs and outputs for quality assurance, namely error analysis and optimisation, and states no other purpose. Its announcement of 19 February 2024 states that customer data is not used for training. No transfer to third parties takes place outside contract performance, a legal obligation, consent or an official request. Outputs are the customer's to use, subject to the labelling duty for AI-assisted content set out in section 8 of the 2026 GTC.
Data retention & training
Hosting summary
The sources do not agree on this point, and both remain live on the site. The factsheet of June 2025 describes GPT-4o with Microsoft Azure as European cloud provider, the launch announcement of 19 February 2024 speaks of a GPT instance hosted in Europe, and the ADV product sheet of July 2025 lists a single sub-processor for the Text-Assistant: Microsoft Ireland Operations, Ltd., One Microsoft Place, South County Business Park, Leopardstown, Dublin 18, D18 P521, Ireland. The privacy policy dated April 2026, however, describes the Text-Assistant as a tool of OpenAI L.L.C., 3180 18th St, San Francisco, CA 94110, states that processing outside the EU cannot be excluded and invokes the European Commission's 2021 standard contractual clauses. Neither statement corrects the other. APA never names a hosting country explicitly for this product; only the European region is stated. The apa.at site itself is hosted by APA-IT in Vienna (AS5403, IP 194.232.43.118), and APA-IT is certified to ISO/IEC 27001:2022.
Things to keep in mind
Risks and trade-offs to weigh before adopting APA-Text-Assistant.
- The site contradicts itself on the model provider. The privacy policy of April 2026 names OpenAI L.L.C. in San Francisco, does not exclude processing outside the EU and relies on the 2021 standard contractual clauses, while the factsheet of June 2025 and the ADV product sheet of July 2025 cite only Microsoft Azure as a European cloud and Microsoft Ireland Operations Ltd as the sole sub-processor. Both versions coexist on the site and neither corrects the other.
- Texts entered are stored for up to one year for evidence purposes, so confidential material should not be pasted in. APA explicitly advises against entering sensitive content, personal data or security-critical information.
- APA disclaims all liability for the texts submitted and for the output generated, which leaves the editorial and legal risk with the user.
- Hallucinations and bias remain possible; APA documents this and requires human review, so every result should be treated as a suggestion rather than a finished text.
- The assistant has no current or accurate data behind it and must not be used for factual work such as research or fact-checking, a habit that is easy to slip into once a tool becomes part of the daily routine.
- Section 8 of the 2026 GTC imposes a duty to label content produced with AI; forgetting it is a contractual breach, not merely an editorial oversight.
- No list of supported languages is published and the service is documented in German, so quality outside German is unverified. Leaning on the assistant for routine shortening and proofreading can also erode the in-house craft it is meant to support.
Setup & Integrations
Technical difficulty
Very low for the integrated routes. Nothing is installed: the assistant is a module activated inside a web application the team already uses, the PR-Desk or the NewsDesk, or a dedicated web app. Authentication runs through APA single sign-on, so existing customers enter with their usual credentials and newcomers complete a one-off registration. No prompting skill is required, APA stating that it has encapsulated its own prompt engineering expertise. In practice, you paste a text and click an action. The only route that requires development work is the API, meant for integration into a third-party production system, and it has no public documentation.
Deployment
Behind APA-Text-Assistant
Social
Resources
All the official URLs gathered for verification and reference.
Frequently asked questions
Who publishes the APA-Text-Assistant?
Which language model does the assistant run on?
How much does it cost?
Is there a free trial?
Is there a permanent free plan?
Are my texts used to train the model?
How long are my texts kept?
Who are the sub-processors, and is a DPA available?
Is there an API, and is there a mobile app?
Is there a minimum age, and who should I contact?
Should you pick APA-Text-Assistant?
The APA-Text-Assistant is an unapologetically niche product: text reworking for the Austrian media and PR ecosystem. It does one thing, transform copy a human has already written, and it does not pretend otherwise. It is not a search engine, not a fact-checking tool and not an autonomous writer; APA says so itself, and warns that the underlying models hold no current or accurate data.
What sets it apart is traceability rather than functional breadth. The sub-processor is named, the Article 28 processing agreements are downloadable in German and English, APA-IT holds ISO/IEC 27001:2022, and a public factsheet documents the model, the retention period, bias and hallucination risk. Few AI text tools publish this much. Against that, the model provider is described differently by the April 2026 privacy policy (OpenAI L.L.C., San Francisco) and by the June 2025 factsheet and July 2025 product sheet (Microsoft Azure, Microsoft Ireland Operations Ltd), a discrepancy the site never resolves and one worth clarifying before signing.
The commercial model is readable: three monthly plans that differ only in the number of requests, billed in Abrufe rather than tokens. It is also not generous at the entry point, where EUR 25 buys 25 requests a month and no permanent free plan exists.
The natural audience is existing APA customers, who find the assistant as a module inside the PR-Desk or the NewsDesk, with nothing to install and no prompting skill required. The API widens that audience to publishers who want character-exact shortening wired into their own production system, though no public documentation lets them evaluate it first. Everyone else should weigh the German-language documentation and the absence of a published language list before committing.
- Choosing a selection results in a full page refresh.
- Opens in a new window.