AI Expectations: Why Publishers Must Balance Excitement With Realism

As anyone can tell from how much I have written about AI’s place in publishing and in the newsroom specifically, it is clear that I’m coming from a place of excitement.

From here, at the particularly-thrilling intersection of publishing and technology, this tool’s work potential is worthy of our best efforts and explorations now while it’s impossible to ignore.

Still, the more-measured reactions and AI reports — whether that’s from the user or the audience perspective — are always welcome, and a recent study from Enders Analysis provides an interesting one to chew on.

As reported by Press Gazette, the European research service released a report saying AI is not likely to “alter the fundamental commercial reality for the news” the same way the shift to online did, and publishers should be realistic about productivity and revenue gains because they may not find an “immediate, killer news use case to raise revenues.”

“In general,” Press Gazette’s Bron Maher writes, “the Enders report suggested the amount of use publishers could get out of generative AI depended on their position in the market.”

For instance, the report highlighted AI use cases such as translating text, creating audio from text, and improving archiving efforts — and, along with it, internal journalistic efforts — with sophisticated metadata, something that would help smaller and local publishers in situations where “some historical material has barely been digitized.” Some larger publishers and agencies may already have some of these integrations, albeit without genAI steering the way.

“The marginal benefits of moving to a generative AI-based system are going to be more limited for an organization that has already automated a large degree of newsgathering and production,” the report says.

I suppose this is exactly where my excitement comes back into the mix, because there is software and AI tools currently out there for publishers of all sizes to see real benefits without plunging completely into untested waters or enterprise-level costs. AI is best when considered a tool for the work you do rather than a miracle replacement simply for work you don’t want to do. And as we all work with it in our own way, we must keep clear eyes paired with our full, excited hearts.

“Publishers must be realistic about the scale of efficiencies and revenue generation opportunities, and size investments accordingly,” the report says. “The opportunity is real, even if broad, democratized access to tools means that AI in itself won’t give a competitive edge.”