AI advances have left news publishers fearing for their business models – new research

News organisations are bracing for serious disruptions as a result of the increasing influence of artificial intelligence (AI) – both on the way that they work and the way their audiences consume news. As part of our latest journalism trends report, my colleagues and I at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism found that less than half (47%) of 314 editors, CEOs and other digital leaders from more than 50 countries say they are confident about journalism’s prospects in 2024.

The report details a tough period for the news industry over several years. A decline in online advertising, slowing growth in subscriber numbers and rapidly declining referrals from social media have fed into dramatic falls in revenue.

Industry data shows that Facebook referrals alone fell by 48% in the past year, and many fear that search traffic will be next. Google and Microsoft, among other tech giants, are expected to roll out AI-driven, chat-based interfaces that have been trained on publisher content – mostly, or so the publisher of the New York Times alleges, without their permission.

But it is not just internet search. We are also seeing a proliferation of conversational AI assistants built into computers, mobile phones and even cars that will change the way we discover and consume content of all types. Queries about the news are increasingly answered directly by the AI interface. Links to sources of the news on publisher websites, meanwhile, disappear into the background. As a result, far fewer audience eyeballs will find their way to each publisher’s site.

Against that background, it is not surprising to find that some publishers such as AP and Axel Springer have already done deals with AI companies. The New York Times, meanwhile, is taking legal action over what it says was the unauthorised use of published work to train AI technologies.

Many publishers hope that this time round, the outcome will benefit publishers of original and high-quality news and information. “There is an opportunity for the industry to work with AI players to design a symbiotic ecosystem and that’s an opportunity we must not squander,” says the chief operating officer of a leading UK news provider, who wishes to remain anonymous.

Most publishers in our survey, however are not optimistic that this new phase of negotiations will work out well. More than one-third (35%) of respondents felt that only a few big media companies would benefit, while around half (48%) predicted that ultimately there would be little money available for any publisher.

Publishers are not confident about funding from big AI companies

Industry concerns are not just about money. More than two-thirds (70%) of respondents think that widespread availability of generative AI could reduce trust in the news. “The explosion of crap content definitely has the potential to shake the trust,” says Christoph Zimmer, chief product officer at German news company Der Spiegel.

Zimmer highlights concerns about the use of deep fakes and other synthetic media, even as he hopes that the widespread availability of such second-rate content could also “allow [trusted] news media to differentiate ourselves more clearly”.

Trying to adapt

While the risks around business models, platforms and trust need to be managed, publishers know there are also significant opportunities to make their newsrooms more efficient. In our survey, we found the majority of publishers (56%) are focusing on back-end automation this year – using AI to help with copyediting, metadata creation and translation – with the next most common AI-related aim being identifying better ways to recommend content (37%).

“The most compelling user case for AI in newsrooms is in the automation of routine tasks,” argues Ed Roussel, head of digital at The Times and Sunday Times. “We do not believe that AI is a substitute for reporting stories, which will continue to be done by journalists.”