The rapid evolution and advancement of generative AI has scared many media companies. The Wall Street Journal reported late last year that search accounts for about 40% of publishers' traffic, much of which is likely to be destroyed by AI-powered news summaries and other tools in the coming years. will go, meaning a drop in advertising and e-commerce revenue.
But the emerging irony is that while AI may take a hammer to the search businesses built by some establishment media companies, it may simultaneously restore their political and cultural power.
Over the past ten years, fringe and alternative media companies have gone viral and hijacked the conversation. Startup news websites, blogs and Facebook pages learned that social media platforms were used to lure audiences away from legacy players, many of whom were slow to adopt. This business model discouraged caution in favor of speed and sensationalism, pushing the news business and political discourse in that direction.
Meanwhile, AI companies are trying to develop bots that are less inclined to regurgitate waste. They are far from perfect; Google introduced its new AI review product this week, suggesting some users try putting glue on their pizza or eating rocks. But dietary recommendations aside, the big players continue to work out the kinks, so that as consumers increasingly turn to AI to make sense of complex and thorny news, machines can reliably spit out accurate information.
OpenAI's ChatGPT and other AI systems train inputs closely guarded secrets, and it's hard to know how they treat websites that are politically biased in some way. But tap firmly. An OpenAI spokesperson did not return a request for comment explaining why the company decided to partner with some news organizations while ignoring others.
But OpenAI's public actions give an indication of which news publishers it believes on its side.
In addition to the outlets it already has agreements with, OpenAI has been in talks with CNN's business and digital teams for several months, although talks have been slow due to disagreements over the value of CNN articles. has fallen The Washington Post told the Wall Street Journal this week that it is “in the market for a major AI partnership.” And Time magazine CEO Jess Sibley told Semaphore in a phone call that it remains in “active and ongoing positive discussions” with OpenAI, and that the company is optimistic about how it will use its information. Will do.
“We've pulled off a lot of significant changes in consumer behavior, and we're excited about that,” he said. “The timing is well-positioned. It's not just our reporting of today and the future – it's our 100-year archives that are also important.”
Even publishers now hostile to AI companies — led by The New York Times, which sued OpenAI — are seeking future business arrangements with them, hoping for better terms. are Before its lawsuit, the Times had been negotiating a licensing agreement with the tech company. Condé Nast, which publishes Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, and Vogue, sees creative AI as a “clear violation of copyright law,” its CEO Roger Lynch said in an emailed statement.
Lynch also called on Congress to enact a new AI regulatory framework. “While some technology companies have shown a willingness to form partnerships and license agreements, others have not. Until everyone operates with a common understanding of the law, the threat to media and publishing remains real and consequential.” Will,” he said.
With the exception of Elon Musk's takeover of X, many of the major developments in social media platforms over the past several years have cost legacy media like The New York Times their digitally native competitors, especially those on the right. But what is strong? Conservative media organizations have been some of the biggest losers of Facebook's decision to exit the news, which has driven traffic to right-leaning news sites.
At least a few conservatives believe that AI, too, threatens to tilt information power toward the establishment. Months after most mainstream news organizations stopped AI crawlers from scraping training data from their sites, many prominent right-wing news sites continued to self-exclude. Both the Daily Caller and the Washington Examiner blocked AI crawlers, but the Daily Wire did so, in part, “to help ensure that AI doesn't end up with all the biases like the establishment press.”
Some left-leaning digital news organizations, including The Intercept, Raw Story, and Alternet, have filed lawsuits against OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement, arguing that AI uses its own technology without proper credit or attribution. Training on the job. The existence of the lawsuit shows that OpenAI doesn't consider the sites to be on the same level as major news players, and doesn't feel the need to compensate them.