The historic and polemic moment when journalism becomes ChatGPT

Instead of lamenting, players in the segment should work in line with the world’s most advanced technologists to stay at the forefront alongside them.

Text by Pyr Marcondes, Senior Partner at Pipeline Capital.

If you missed it, here is a quick summary, a timeline, of some of the world’s most important journalistic companies that have just made agreements with ChatGPT.

Let’s discuss whether this is good, bad, or something else entirely.

Timeline of agreements between publishers and ChatGPT

1. January: Associated Press
   Collaboration to improve OpenAI’s AI models;
   
2. February: Le Monde and Prisa Media
   Agreement to allow ChatGPT users to access high-quality content about recent events;
   
3. March: Financial Times
   Agreement to provide exclusive content and collaborate on developing new AI-based products, helping to improve the quality and relevance of ChatGPT’s responses;
   
4. April: Axel Springer
   Partnership with one of the world’s largest publishers to enrich ChatGPT users’ experience with updated and original content, including exclusive stories and reports;
   
5. May: The Atlantic and Vox Media
   Partnership to provide summaries and links to original articles on ChatGPT.

For ChatGPT, these partnerships are crucial because:

• Quality content
  Allows access to high-quality and updated content, essential for improving the accuracy and relevance of ChatGPT’s responses;
  
• Credibility
  Collaboration with renowned publishers increases ChatGPT’s credibility and reliability as an information tool;
  
• AI Training
  This is the most important of all. The data provided by these partnerships are valuable for the continuous training and improvement of AI models.

Criticisms and disadvantages for publishers

• Dependence and loss of control
  Critics argue that publishers may become overly dependent on ChatGPT for distribution and monetization, losing control over their content and audience;
  
  Critical source: “This dependence on ChatGPT can lead to a situation where publishers no longer control their own narratives, and OpenAI’s algorithmic decisions start dictating which stories get visibility.”
  – The Guardian
  
• Devaluation of content
  There are concerns that publishers’ content may be devalued, as summaries and responses generated by ChatGPT might reduce direct traffic to the publishers’ websites;
  
  Critical source: “The risk is that people get enough information from the AI-generated summary without needing to visit the original site, decreasing advertising and subscription revenue.”
  – New York Times

We only change history if we change ourselves

I was the country manager of an internet portal (content and services, an editor, therefore) called Starmedia, and also a contributing columnist for the newspaper Valor Econômico, back in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

No one needed to tell me. I lived this historic moment firsthand, in life and in the eye of the hurricane.

Editors generally opposed the indexing of their production and content by Google, fearing loss of control and their own relevance.

There, they made the first of a series of gross misinterpretations of history (due to a mix of atavistic ignorance and arrogance) and are paying for it to this day.

Before that, they had already opposed the advent of the internet itself, and the vast majority thought it would be no more than a passing technology.

I was there. I saw it. Don’t ask me, I can name one by one, to anyone who wishes, the names of entrepreneurs, journalists, and editors from our media world who held this rigid position.

There, I said, the editorial industry should have been the one, not Google, to invent indexing and search platforms, because they were always the ones holding the production and distribution of content.

Now it’s all the same.

Instead of being revisionists of a history that is obviously, and once again, being written without their input, editors, journalists, and industry entrepreneurs should immediately and urgently take on unprecedented leadership and do the following:

1. Optimize monetization and distribution
   Incorporating new revenue streams and increasing the distribution of their content under their control;
   
2. Innovation and relevance
   Staying at the technological forefront and ensuring their content is relevant and accessible in the context of these new technologies;
   
3. Access to data
   Benefiting from the data and analysis provided by AI use, helping to understand reader behaviors and preferences;
   
4. Use and create generative AI
   To optimize their analytical and critical editorial capacity, which are essentially journalistic attributes.

So here it is, and actually, it’s stupidly simple (the use of an expression linked to stupidity is not, here, a language accident… editor’s note): work in line with the world’s most advanced technologists to stay at the forefront alongside them, who will, whether we like it or not (our feeling of lament is truly irrelevant), inevitably write the history of the future.

Like any risk, this is an OPPORTUNITY. And a unique one!

The option is, once again, to stay behind and be dragged along, complaining like astonished rebellious teenagers. As always.

Text by Pyr Marcondes, Senior Partner at Pipeline Capital.
Originally published in Meio & Mensagem.

Read more technology articles:

• 2041: yes, the machines will come for us. By Pyr Marcondes
• The Medium, the Message, and the Relationship. By Alon Sochaczewski
• M&A in the technology sector: challenges and opportunities
• What is Martech and why it’s essential for the success of your business

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