Last month the creative industries came together to launch the ‘Make It Fair’ campaign in response to the government’s consultation on AI and proposal to amend the current copyright legislation. Put simply, the new legislation allows technology companies to use AI to scrape creative works without the author’s permission, unless they have actively opted out.
Propelling AI even further into the mainstream, every British newspaper gave over their front cover the campaign. As PRs, we need to be fully aware of how AI is functioning, and changing the way audiences consume media. We’ve all noticed the AI generated summary that pops up when we search something on Google. Are you wary of that summary, or do you find it helpful? A quick poll around the office shows it’s helpful, but there’s still a level of distrust. “It depends what I am asking, if it’s something simple I’ll take the AI answer, if it's something legal or complicated I need to do a deeper dive”. 74% of publishers are concerned about the affect these AI summaries will have on their search traffic. It all pans back to who we trust. Whilst there have been some notable, and therefore newsworthy mistakes, for the most part AI is doing its job, and very efficiently.
Some news sites are now offering up an AI summary of their articles, appealing to our shortening concentration spans, but thirst to know it all. In a world where everything moves quickly, is it better to know roughly what six different articles are saying than to spend your time reading one? Again, the jury is out and you can dip in and out of both approaches. AI gives you options. However, those short sharp summaries are sure to stir up a slight panic from PRs wondering if those carefully planted key messages will now need to survive both the cutting room floor and a brutal AI chop.
An alternative media eco-system is still emerging. In recognition of how much time it takes to create good content, platforms such as Substack are growing in popularity. Whether it’s media fatigue and distrust, or just an interest in a new take on a popular topic, people are can be more open to paying for content if it rewards creative individuals over a giant news corporation. Meanwhile established news providers are struggling to hold on to referral traffic from social media. Facebook referrals are down 2/3 over the past two years and X is down by half. Platforms aim to keep viewers in platform, it’s harder and harder to garner interaction on a LinkedIn post including a link to another website. Native content wins.
To counter this, publishers are moving away from landscape video, providing vertical short-form content to compete with TikTok and Instagram. These next few years will be very interesting as we see how journalism adapts to AI. It poses a challenge, but not necessarily a threat. AI cannot do everything, it cannot report live from the ground, and we can safely say, it will never have the creative flair of a real trained writer. It’s here to stay, so let’s embrace it for what it’s good for, and work to ensure the value of authentic writing and reporting is not undermined.
This blog was inspired by PR Moment’s webinar “The World’s Greatest PR Research”, where we heard from Nic Newman, lead author, Reuters Institute Digital Report, senior research associate, Reuters Institute on the future of AI in journalism.