As AI-generated content proliferates, publishers are hoping that original reporting, human connection, and trust will help differentiate their output – and ultimately convince more people to pay for access to it.
Commoditized content is becoming increasingly difficult to monetize sustainably, whether through advertising, subscriptions, or any other means. Publishers are now recognizing that their futures hinge on the ability to uncover new information and contextualize and present it in ways that artificial intelligence cannot.
“The premium for people who can tell you things you do not know will only grow in importance, and no machine will do that,” Axios chief executive Jim VandeHei told the New York Times last week, adding that AI will “eviscerate the weak, the ordinary, the unprepared in media.”
That evisceration may already be underway, with a growing number of publishers being forced to downsize their operations as interest in their output dwindles. Discussions around the merits of subscriptions and other business models may also be distracting from the underlying reality that some publishers are not currently producing the types of content that will enable them to survive the technological and distribution shifts of the next few years.