musings-on-media-in-the-age-of-ai.md (2890B)
1 +++ 2 title = "Biting the Hand That Feeds You" 3 date = 2024-12-24 4 updated = 2025-01-12 5 [extra] 6 type = "link" 7 link = "https://om.co/2024/12/21/dark-musings-on-media-ai/" 8 +++ 9 10 Om, on his blog: 11 12 > Unlike search engines, AI platforms are built on precision and 13 > summaries. They’re unlikely to be a major source of traffic or 14 > advertising revenue. What about getting paid for the summaries OpenAI 15 > serves in response to prompts? These prompts will vary widely, as will 16 > the responses, breaking the traditional mass-media revenue model. As I 17 > explained in my “future of browser” article, information itself is 18 > being atomized, which will likely upend the web and media as we know 19 > them.... OpenAI, Anthropic, and Perplexity... won’t need the media for 20 > long. 21 22 What does it mean to not "need the media" anymore? Chatbots know nothing 23 of the observable universe—they are fed media, during and after 24 training. OpenAI et. al. do not experience events as they happen. 25 Reporters are on-site witnesses and produce original analyses that 26 comprise both the news we consume and the content AI is fed. 27 28 > The internet was originally envisioned as a place for connection, 29 > collaboration, and discovery. But over time, it has been distorted by 30 > business models that prioritize engagement metrics over meaningful 31 > interaction. Discovery has long been the open web’s greatest 32 > challenge, with search engines turning it into an SEO game and social 33 > platforms creating algorithmic echo chambers. AI platforms are making 34 > discovery almost irrelevant. 35 36 This is because the greatest challenge has always, in fact, been 37 monetization. Before the internet, you could sell people the paper your 38 news was printed on to fund its production. When the internet first 39 arrived, it was a toy and money wasn't a factor. When real people came 40 online, money made everything bigger and better but also introduced ads, 41 engagement, and the rest of that garbage fire because we've all agreed 42 that web pages are free. 43 44 If ChatGPT takes over the internet and we say that news companies can't 45 make money through their existing channels anymore, they will need to 46 find yet another way to pay their staff. I hesitate to say that we are 47 running out of business models, but we are certainly burning through 48 them at an alarming rate. More importantly they all seem to suck. 49 50 > You stay still, but your AI agent goes out and fetches, distills, and 51 > synthesizes the content and renders it in whatever format you want — 52 > audio, video, or text. This is the future. 53 54 Not if there is no content to synthesize, because they have been driven 55 to bankruptcy. Mass media is an invention, not a necessary constant. If 56 AI obsoletes the news by providing people with a mouthpiece that they 57 prefer, without providing a backstop for the companies that produce its 58 sources, it will run out of material to synthesize. 59 60 <!-- more -->