Communications of the ACM
Publishers Worry A.I. Chatbots Will Cut Readership
Said Bryan Goldberg, chief executive of lifestyle and culture site publisher BDG, "You’re bringing together Wikipedia-style answers to an infinite number of questions, and that’s just going to nuke many corners of the open Web."
Credit: Michael Haddad
The publishing industry has spent the past two decades struggling to adjust to the internet, as print circulation has plummeted and tech companies have gobbled up rivers of advertising revenue.
Now come the chatbots.
New artificial intelligence tools from Google and Microsoft give answers to search queries in full paragraphs rather than a list of links. Many publishers worry that far fewer people will click through to news sites as a result, shrinking traffic — and, by extension, revenue.
The new A.I. search tools remain in limited release, so publishers such as Condé Nast and Vice have not yet seen an effect on their business. But in an effort to prevent the industry from being upended without their input, many are pulling together task forces to weigh options, making the topic a priority at industry conferences and, through a trade organization, planning a push to be paid for the use of their content by chatbots.
From The New York Times
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