AI will make mincemeat of content websites

Here’s the bleak future of publishing.

Google, openAI, Bing – all those creepy, crawly things – have bots slurping up your content right this minute. They’re using your content to train their AI so they can replace you. In just a little while from now, people won’t have to come to your website much at all. They’ll ask AI a question, and they’ll get their answer.

Maybe that’s inevitable. Maybe there’s no way to stop that train. But there’s no reason to lay down on the tracks.

Resist.

The New York Times is taking the lead here. They’re changed their terms and conditions to forbid the use of their content to train AI. It reads, in relevant part …

"The contents of the .. the Site, are intended for your personal, non-commercial use. ... Non-commercial use does not include … training a machine learning or artificial intelligence (AI) system."

You will rarely hear me say this, but bravo New York Times.

All publishers should follow their lead.

Will that stop the downfall of publisher websites? I don’t think so. It might delay it, but it won’t stop it.

Chatbots are getting better and better, and people will use them more and more.

Have you ever done a recipe search, or looked up how to mix a certain cocktail. Instead of getting an answer, you get two pages of nonsense about somebody’s aunt, and then you might get the recipe down at the bottom.

That sort of thing is over. Thank God. But other types of informational sites will suffer the same fate.

So what does the future hold? It’s hard to say with great certainty, because we don’t know what the 2024 version of ChatGPT will be able to do. But here are some ideas.

* Have a unique voice with a personality.
* I don’t like this suggestion, but some people think you should focus on storytelling.
* Go deep into a niche.
* Focus on user-generated content with quizzes, polls, and surveys.
* Don’t fight AI. Use it – with your own content – to create a better experience for the user.

But in the meanwhile, please, get your head off the railroad track and start blocking AI bots.

Resources

New York Times terms of service
https://help.nytimes.com/hc/en-us/articles/115014893428-Terms-of-service