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I listened in to the UK government Communications and Digital Committee consultation into the relationship between news and tech yesterday. While there was a lot of the usual whinging about bigger boys taking their lunch money, there was also chat about the impact of generative AI and its impact on the internet. David Dinsmore, News UK’s COO, cited a stat (though not a source, can you believe he used to edit The Sun?) that 90% of the internet will be synthetic “in a couple of year’s time”.
This story from Wired would appear to support that claim, but it also has wider implications about the digital advertising ecosystem that wasn’t brought up in the consultation: “Using Google’s ad network on AI-generated posts with fake bylines could fall foul of the company’s publisher policies, which forbid content that “misrepresents, misstates, or conceals” information about the creator of content.”
It calls to mind a similar story we included in this newsletter earlier this month about Nebojša Vujinović Vujo, the ‘AI news kingpin’. In his own defence the DJ-turned-media-entrepreneur stated that if he wasn’t doing it, someone else would be. Well, we’ve had the proof of that — and there are for sure many, many other people out there doing exactly the same.
Here’s an interesting exclusive from Axios’ Sara Fischer. Hot off the success of FT Strategies’ growth, the Nikkei-owned FT Group has launched a separate investment arm that “lets the FT explore strategic investments in smaller, high-growth startups that wouldn’t make sense for the broader FT Group.” Again, the FT isn’t an organisation that most media companies can copy, but this is a fun story in its own right.
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What if micropayments weren’t so micro? That’s the argument from Acast co-founders Måns Ulvestam and Karl Rosander, who are set to bring their payment solution Sesamy to the UK. City AM has done an interestingly upbeat look at why Sesamy has worked in Sweden — but the UK ecosystem is oh so very different, and I’m not convinced that this will necessarily increase propensity to pay over here.
Peter included an excoriating look at why Vice failed in yesterday’s newsletter — and surprise surprise it turned out to be a revolving door of mendacious and egotistical decision makers. But I’m including this in here because Sirin Kale, for who writing for Vice was her first journalism role, has first-hand experience of the good and bad of the late media business.
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