AI & editorial trust

TRB Audience Summit is on Sept 17 in NYC. AI will be the big issue lurking in all sessions. The story of AI and media to date has mostly been around its negative impact on traffic by disrupting Google search as a distribution channel. The bigger question we’ll grapple with is how to rebuild old models for a new environment, and what new models are best positioned for where the Information Space is going.

Join me and the Media People who are figuring this out.

Today, new TRB research on how trust concerns are slowing the adoption of AI in editorial organizations, and a conversation with NBCU chief product officer Ryan McConville on how big tech platforms are taking credit for intent they didn’t create.

Maybe it was Covid. Maybe it was the overheated claims that doctors would be replaced by AI. Maybe it was the disastrous impact of AI Overviews on distribution. Whatever it was, the thinking was the AI changes to media production would be shock therapy. Instead, we got gradualism.

Innovation usually happens on the margins. Incumbents rarely lead the charge. In TRB’s latest research project, in collaboration with WordPress VIP, we surveyed media executives on how they’re balancing the adoption of AI with the important but gauzy requirement to safeguard trust. What we found is AI is slowly seeping into most newsroom processes – up to a point. And the hesitance comes back to the competing tension of maintaining audience trust.

This fits with a pattern. Publishers are in large part operating old models that are in structural decline with unproven new models that require different skillsets and approaches. AI as a general purpose technology will inevitably play a key role up and down the value chain. Yet as the three-year anniversary of ChatGPT’s debut nears, publishers are loathe to sacrifice already dwindling audience trust by fully embracing AI in the creation process, relegating it instead to supporting corporate functions. 

That’s striking because media is an area widely tabbed as most exposed to AI disruption. The key strategic decision for publishers is how far they want to go – and have the license to go. I find many times “trust’ is a handy excuse for protectionism. The reality is that AI is widely distrusted within newsrooms, in part for its hallucinations and in because if Bill Gates thinks it’s going to replace doctors, then journalists don’t stand much of a chance.

That attitude could turn out to be a luxury belief the industry cannot afford in a transition that while more gradual than thought will likely be as profounds and disruptive as the shift from analog to digital models. The “song of the summer” was likely AI generated. I suspect we will look back wistfully on this “AI slop” period because quality will continue to improve to the point where it is often, if not always, superior to human output. 

Read the full report, based on 40 respondents, with half in executive roles, in addition to interviews with top executives. Thanks to WordPress VIP for collaborating on this research. 

Download How AI is Reshaping Trust, Transparency & Editorial Credibility

Ryan McConville, chief product officer at NBCUniversal, makes the case that premium video has been underappreciated as the origin point of culture. That ends up leaving it shortchanged by the platforms that built their businesses on top of it as advertising was subsumed by performance marketing.

“If you only feed the bottom of the funnel, you eventually run out of new customers. Brand and performance are intimately linked. If you take your foot off the gas on brand, it’s just going to raise the cost in your other channels. It’s all performance—it’s simply different parts of performance.”

Listen to the full episode or watch it on YouTube

Thanks to EX.CO for underwriting TRB Conversations

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