Brian Stoller, CMO, Foundry, an IDG Company
In his keynote presentation at MediaGrowth Executive Summit 2024, Brian Stoller outlined findings from the company’s research on AI adoption, including what business leaders are optimistic about as well as where they’re exercising caution.
Brian started off with a warning that those who don’t embrace this technology and take the time to teach AI skills to editorial, writing, and content creation teams risk getting left behind fast. But he reminded us that as we scramble to adopt this transformative technology, we must prepare for its long-term impact. How AI technology will affect marketing, sales and revenue is still a relative unknown.
Generative AI tools should be used as a co-pilot to assist our expert journalists/authors, to help them identify sources, and ensure accuracy, not as a pilot that creates new narratives/flight paths.
Our brands have great value for our companies and for our business communities because of our high-quality content and audience data. A delicate balance of automation and human talent must be achieved to maintain that valuable quality.
Companies need to not only adopt clear strategies, but also create a framework around them and stick to it to keep everyone on the same page, and hopefully, readers as well.
Companies using generative AI in their newsrooms, and across their writing and content creation teams need to devise a framework that establishes what work the AI will touch as well as a set of guiding principles around the processes. Principles include approaches to machine versus human creation of text and images, as well as transparency, authentication and validation, and personalization.
Media companies must take a hard line in not letting our content and audience information become available on the open web without recognition and compensation. The problem so far is finding a technology we can use to protect this information.
Because of its power, generative AI has presented the largest disruption to the media industry in decades. Responsibility issues and ethical considerations abound. IT professionals have difficulty addressing these concerns when implementing AI technologies in IT systems and processes. Just because we can, doesn’t mean we should.
Together, through considered self-regulation, we can grow an industry that is building around AI.
