This article originally appeared on Campaign.
The rise of artificial intelligence will “profoundly change” the magazine industry, and the sector needs to work together to innovate and ensure there are “protections in place” for content creators.
That was a key theme that emerged at the PPA Festival, an annual gathering of UK magazine industry chiefs, where Sajeeda Merali and Nina Wright, respectively the CEO and chair of the PPA, both referred to the opportunities and threats posed by AI.
“Media is at the very centre of this AI debate. It will profoundly change the way we both produce and consume media,” Wright said, explaining how the PPA recently held a roundtable with editorial decision-makers about the impact of this emergent technology.
Wright, who is also chief executive of Harmsworth Media, which owns New Scientist, said the PPA wanted to use “the power of the collective voice” to support the creators of professionally-produced content as government considers potential regulation of AI.
She added the PPA is set to meet policy advisers from the Office of Artificial Intelligence at the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology this week.
Merali said the PPA wants to help the magazine sector and the wider media industry “to create some common guidelines on how AI should be used” and “to ensure the right balance is struck” between innovation and regulation.
It is vital that “there are protections in place for content creators whose works have been used by machine learning tools without appropriate compensation and this will involve working alongside other creative sectors and trade bodies”, Merali said.
The use of generative AI tools, such as ChatGPT, has exploded since the start of 2023, with internet users using the tech to carry out tasks including answering questions and writing articles. ChatGPT reportedly reached 100 million users in only two months in February.
Other speakers at the PPA Festival also mentioned the growing role of data and AI.
Lucy Kueng, Senior Visiting Research Fellow at the Reuters Institute, gave a presentation about organisational change in media companies and said there was a trend for new roles within the senior leadership team or C-suite to reflect the changing nature of a “digital-centric” industry.
These new roles include: an executive with specific responsibility for data and AI, which is distinct and separate from the role of chief technology officer; a top commercial role for an executive who can understand growth areas such as digital subscriptions strategy as well as advertising sales; and a “super-charged HR role” with responsibility for improving a company’s “social architecture” in areas such as culture, talent and inclusion, as employees are less loyal and more likely to change jobs.
Peter Medwid, co-founder of and partner at Katahdin Media Management, which recently surveyed PPA members about various industry issues, said most media companies were “pragmatic” and “cautious” about AI but he encouraged leaders to experiment.
“AI is exploding in so many different areas – don’t limit it to ChatGPT,” Medwid said. “There’s AI for photography, for video, for illustration and music, and more is in development all of the time,” he added, pointing out that several companies have set up an internal “taskforce” to tackle AI.
AI can remove some of the “sheer drudgery and time” involved in doing some tasks such as social media posts. “That was an opportunity to let AI step in and save about 45 minutes to an hour of this individual’s day,” one PPA member told Medwid’s survey team.
