Most discussions about AI begin and end with how Big Tech scraped the open web and stole content to train their AI models.
That’s true, and the act was egregious and is being litigated, but there’s a potentially game-changing nuance that benefits news media that has too little attention.
Training the AIs was foundational, a first and essential step, but that alone will not generate the billions that Big Tech needs to see repaid.
Afterall, it wasn’t Sir Tim Berners Lee’s HTTP protocol that created value, it was Zuck and his like that built products on it. They banked the billions.
The road to AI’s riches therefore will be through killer apps that leverage its immense power and potential.
Most haven’t been imagined yet, but some we know will port over, and the biggest of these, is search.
This is big, so let me explain my hypothesis, and I’ll be diving deeper into this later this week, as my research suggests an emerging theme.
But in precis. The world wide web as we know it is showing its age, and the war for it has been won. Google owns search. Meta owns social. Both are so big, no-one can compete.
They have such reach that they have hoovered up 86% of all the world’s advertising. That makes it game, set, and match, to them.
Publishing isn’t failing because people don’t want the news. The data shows people want news more than ever, but the painful truth is that consumers are getting it from search and social.
And advertising isn’t failing because people aren’t buying ads or clicking on them. Global ad spend is growing, but brands and agencies are spending it all with Meta and Google.
Today’s web has been bought and sold. Google built the rails. Meta owns the trains.
AI redraws the landscape, but publishers are distracted by its ability to create new content. It’s alluring and cheap, but it’s not where the game changing money will be.
All my searching is now done by AI and through voice. I ask Copilot in plain language what I want and do it without typing into my phone or browser.
That’s a game changer that derails search, and Google with it, putting $1.7 trillion of valuation back in play for winners of AI’s disruption.
Publishers should also put their minds to how content will be delivered in an AI future. My search responses are spoken back to me now.
The volume of my reading is falling, at the same time I am consuming more by getting my news read to me while driving, walking, running, etc...
This latest disintermediation means less page views for publishers, and less ads, from someone who loves the product as much as anyone. This is a dangerous trend.
Listen as I ask Microsoft Copilot to read me the top tech headlines from the NY Times without touching a key.
That’s the future of search, and the solution to my morning commute, and my time-poor workday right there. I spent two hours 38 mins talking with Copilot yesterday.
But this doesn’t have to be bad.
If AI creates a new era for content discovery and delivery, then it leads down a path to an inevitable splinternet.
In that future, today’s web remains dominated by Google and Meta and becomes funded by a flood of programmatic AI-generated ads.
A new AI-enabled web can then emerge based on Copilot and other AIs that integrate into every device, which is paid for and premium.
Governments and antitrust regulators would get what they want. A digital future where content creators, publishers, consumers, and advertisers, have more choice.
A signal of the impending break-up came this week with Microsoft’s AI partner OpenAI announcing it was building… a search engine.
Think about that.
Microsoft needs to own the premium web. If it builds the winning AI search tool, then it acts as a moat to keep deadly rival Google out.
A premium web needs premium publishers, meaning Microsoft is motivated to support the news industry.
We just saw Act One, Scene One. OpenAI announced its search engine, and moments later, Google’s value crashed.
Plenty more on this later in the week.
Listen: Did OpenAI's surprise move just unlock a window for the news industry?