| Bonjour! I’m writing to you fresh off a trip from Cannes, where the advertising industry descended upon one of the world’s most beautiful towns to toast their creative achievements and discuss what’s next.
A.I. was the topic of the week. On Wednesday, I interviewed Axel Springer CEO Mathias Dopfner about how he is preparing his media organization, which publishes Politico, Bild, Die Welt, Insider, and Morning Brew, for the A.I. future. The interview came one day after Bild notified hundreds of employees they were being laid off and blamed it partly on A.I.
Dopfner feels the need to move urgently, even if he does not have all the answers about how his business model will be disrupted. He acknowledged that the wrong decisions made today could result in Axel Springer ceasing to exist within three years. Axel Springer recently created an A.I. M&A team to keep tabs on startups seeking to disrupt media organizations. Dopfner is also embedding some his top lieutenants within A.I. companies to learn more about the technology.
One of the most pressing issues Dopfner says needs to be solved is copyright protection for publishers, without which “there will be no business model” for media companies to pursue. All incentives to create new content would be gone: If you don’t get paid to create something—whether that’s art, music, or journalism—why would you make it? A lack of original content wouldn’t just hurt society; it would also harm the A.I. companies that feed on new information.
Axel Springer has teamed up with IAC and Dow Jones to push for copyright protections. When I asked him how copyright discussions with Google and Microsoft were going, Dopfner merely said it’s going better now than it was before.
He also acknowledged that global A.I. copyright principles are needed, at least among democratic countries. This would help offset the effects of China building A.I. under completely different sets of rules.
How are we thinking about A.I. here at Fortune?
I generally agree with Dopfner that A.I. is the biggest disrupter I’ve seen for the industry, and that, as he puts it, “only the best original content creators will survive.” Commodity news (“Tesla stock plummets”), aggregation (“The 10 biggest takeaways in Trump’s indictment”), explainers (“What happens when the Titan sub implodes?”) and service journalism (“Which EV should I buy?”) will eventually be handled either partly or entirely by A.I.
Unearthing new information will be where newsrooms deliver the most value, and ultimately that will bring journalism back to its core purpose of seeking the truth. That shift will take a few years while hallucinations—A.I. delivering answers that include incorrect or made-up information—gets sorted.
More immediately, at Fortune, we feel A.I. can be a powerful tool to help our journalists and editors become even more efficient, eliminating some of the grunt work that goes into bringing you great stories.
If, for example, we could use A.I. to create better data visualizations, summarize stories into key takeaways, write you better headlines, or aid research for our interviews or lists, we will have more time to focus on the actual reporting we love doing most. You can hear me briefly talk to Dopfner about that, here.
I’m optimistic about Fortune in an A.I. world. Quality reporting has been our mission for 93 years, and the rise of A.I. gives that mission even more purpose and urgency. Check out some of our best features from the past week, below. |
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