Winning at AI relies on publisher partnerships

AI could be the most ruthless disruptor the news business has ever faced, and it could also be the industry’s best hope to save and sustain itself...

As a journalist-turned-AI entrepreneur I have a front row seat to the tech-tonic shifts that are driving change in the media.

I was heading digital at News UK when a still-small Google came to us for help. I pitched a social start-up before Facebook, then saw News Corp splurge £433 million on MySpace. My warnings about programmatic ads were brushed aside before revenue collapsed and our smartest sales people left en masse.

At the top of my news career, I quit and joined Microsoft as a maternity cover to learn what we were doing wrong. I worked on Bing, Big Data, partnerships and video, and armed with what I learned, founded AI company Oovvuu which now services publishers and broadcasters globally.

Knowing what I know through my tech connections, AI will be the most ruthless disruptor the news industry has faced. Explosive public adoption and the industrialisation of plagiarism means inaction is s…