Baby Please Don't Go

This week's Dall-E-generated image was created by asking:

I want a 16:9 image that depicts the irony that big media companies that have historically criticised Google web search for "stealing content" are now worried that AI may have the impact of reducing web search traffic.

The irony is obvious. This week Axel Springer struck a long-term deal to allow OpenAi to train on its published output. And according to Rupert Murdoch's Wall Street Journal:

Google's generative-AI-powered search is the true nightmare for publishers. Across the media world, Google generates nearly 40% of publishers' traffic, accounting for the largest share of their "referrals," according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of data from measurement firm Similarweb

Publishers are reacting to the new AI platforms in different ways. All are aware that the assumptions held since the emergence of the internet, and web 2.0, are now being called into question.

For all of the hullabaloo over the years decrying search engines for "stealing" content by indexing it, it is now clearer than ever that media companies depend on Google, and specifically on web search, for a large portion of its traffic.

Since the iPhone in 2007, Mobile has already impacted web traffic. AI will compound the effect because it can deliver a user's needs without a URL or getting them to visit a destination.

What the WSJ does not drill into is that Google too is threatened by the rise of OpenAI. Google lives off of the revenue that web searches generate. Less web search means less revenue. As a result Google and the Big Media are actually on the same side. they need to slow down the impact of AI on web search. From the WSJ:

Liz Reid, a Google vice president who works on the search engine, said the company is committed to driving traffic to web publishers. She said Google has had more conversations with publishers than it typically does after introducing substantial changes to search, because "it's a more significant change in the evolution of the space." She offered no timeline for Google's broader rollout of the AI-powered search tool.

"Any attempts to estimate the traffic impact of our SGE experiment are entirely speculative at this stage as we continue to rapidly evolve the user experience and design, including how links are displayed, and we closely monitor internal data from our tests," Reid said.

All of this has led Google and publishers to carry out an increasingly complex dialogue. In some meetings, Google is pitching the potential benefits of the other AI tools it is building, including one that would help with the writing and publishing of news articles, according to people familiar with the matter. Many news outlets, from BuzzFeed to USA Today owner Gannett, already are experimenting with AI tools.

I hate to bring bad tidings, but the decline of web search is inevitable and will be driven by the success of conversational interfaces.

That does not have to mean the decline of big media. Axel Springer seems to have understood that media succeeds in so far as it penetrates new platforms. by embracing OpenAI it opens the possibility of its linked pages being available to users via the conversational interface.

Good content, written by authoritative writers, will be no less important in the future than in the past.

Substack's Hamish McKenzie published a missive on AI and writing this week. He starts out understanding the angst AI may cause:

Many writers are anxious about how their lives and work will be affected as artificial intelligence becomes more powerful. Companies like Writer offer tools to instantly generate materials that might otherwise have been created by humans. Some news organizations have already started publishing automatically generated stories, even as they lay off writers and editors. With a one-sentence prompt and 20 seconds of thought, one can now get ChatGPT to turn out an essay that rivals something an experienced writer might have taken days to produce.

Whether you're for or against this development ultimately doesn't matter. It's happening. The AI hype cycle may go through some ups and downs, but the new epoch has unquestionably begun. These technologies are already real, effective, and proven, which makes this particular technomania different from other hype cycles.

Given this set of conditions, writers - and all other culture makers whose livelihoods will in some way be touched by AI - are entitled to feel worried and perhaps even a little pissed. After all, these new machines are trained on a vast corpus of work produced by humans. And those humans, most of whom have never found a way to turn their art into riches, aren't getting compensated along the way.

But then counsels creators:

But now is when we tell you that we don't think this will be bad for culture makers. In fact, it will be very good. While AI will take over the rote and the replaceable, it will give superpowers to people doing original work, while at the same time increasing the value of that work.

When it comes to Substack, we have focused on using the internet's powers to serve, rather than subsume, writers. There's nothing in the AI revolution that suggests we will have to change this approach. From image generation and audio transcription tools we've already built, to a future where a single writer can make a feature film, and beyond, we will focus on harnessing the power of these tools for human users. If the computer is a bicycle for the mind, AI will be a jumbo jet.

The cost of "content creation" will be driven to almost zero. But content isn't culture.

This same surge in AI-led content production will simultaneously fuel a tremendous need for cultural connection: real humans in communion with one another. These relationships help us make sense of the world, and to know where to direct our attention. Their value will dramatically increase. Culture will become the most important and fastest-growing slice of our global domestic product.

If we try to figure out winners and losers at this point then my money is on resistors or "decels" as the biggest losers. Google has to choose whether to be one of those by clinging to the past. Big Media has to make the same call. But creativity will be a winner, as will those who lean into the changes.

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