If publishers had to explain their relationship with AI, a 2012-style Facebook status would probably do the trick: It’s complicated.
Publishers want their content to be surfaced by AI search interfaces. But offering AI scrapers free and unlimited access to content is a slippery slope that can lead to well-fed LLMs and starving pubs. Plus, there’s always the question of whether AI chatbots accurately surface publisher content.
AI’s “blended answers” are only as accurate as the sources they’re pulled from, and often less so, said Jonathan Roberts, chief innovation officer at People Inc. Too often, he added, the technology is “prone to hallucination, which is a wonderful rebranding of the words ‘making things up.’”
To control how content from its wide-ranging publisher portfolio gets used – and cited – in AI responses, People Inc. has taken a harder stance than most pubs. It’s blocking all scrapers by default and only giving access to approved AI partners that have content licensing deals in place.
Roberts spoke to AdExchanger about finding the balance between blocking and monetizing AI. He also discussed the grassroots backlash to the AI revolution and the implications for publishers.
