UK media leaders grappled with five key challenges facing the news industry at Press Gazette’s Future of Media Trends event in London on Wednesday.
The elephant in the room was the promise of AI content marketplaces which could start seeing publishers rewarded for the growing AI-powered news audience.
Around 60 senior publisher representatives representing a range of titles and roles discussed the various existential challenges on five off-the-record roundtables over the course of a morning at South Place Hotel.
There were no easy solutions on offer, but plenty of individual success stories. One niche B2B publisher has become one of the most-cited titles by AI chatbots and welcomes these platforms as a way to spread the reach of the brand. A regional publisher has started to see major subscriptions growth with crime and sport being the key drivers. Another publisher spoke about the friendly AI dinosaur avatar installed on their CMS to provide helpful suggestions to journalists on how to optimise headlines and other aspects of their copy.
The five challenges as set out on the roundtables were as follows:
Using AI in-house to generate more value from publishers’ vast archives. This discussion, sponsored by FT Strategies, concluded that it was time to “be more confident in our value as publishers and not just dance to the tune of AI companies”.
Another AI-heavy table, sponsored by Dataplan, discussed the widely accepted view that AI and automation should be used to help drive multi-channel publishing and re-versioning of the same story into different formats. Different newsrooms are on widely varying points in the journey and debates remain over how much human craftsmanship should be relinquished to the machines.
The table sponsored by Swipefinder discussed how publishers can make advertising more effective (and less annoying for readers). We are in the business of trust, the table concluded, and user experience is key. The dream is to create a frictionless experience for your audience in a trusted environment where readers want to come back and even enjoy your ads.
A table sponsored by Admiral looked at AI co-pilots and defensive versus offensive use of the technology. Some publishers have built their own LLMs internally, and then removed them because they weren’t driving value, the table heard. Blocking unwanted bots remains a major challenge and the key defensive play for publishers. Overall, there appeared to be an acceptance that publishers need to get on the front foot both in terms of harnessing AI to exploit their own websites and protecting their intellectual property.
Social video specialists Storyful hosted a table on video strategies and concluded that there were big opportunities to use AI in the sourcing and publication of video, but also huge risks for publishers who don’t get it right.
One of the broader takeaways from the day was the fact that AI is a powerful tool, but only when used by an expert human. All spoke about the need for close checking of AI-powered work because of the constant threat of mistakes and hallucinations.
Throughout the day there was much talk about AI content marketplaces and the hope that websites scrapers can be better controlled and monetised. Microsoft and Amazon are building marketplaces and the SPUR coalition in the UK hopes put a scheme in place where publishers can collectively control access to their sites.
But so far these much hoped-for payments for AI access to content have yet to materialise and instead the multi-billion-pound AI content industry is largely fuelled by theft – both of content and online clicks.
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