What will AI kill first, publishers or platforms?

Once we all have AI agents, why will we need platforms?

In today's podcast I look through the futurescope to see how personalized AI agents will affect both publishers and platforms (like X, LinkedIn, Facebook, etc.).

I’ve been saying for a while that AI will be very bad for publishers, because why would you go to a website to find an answer when AI can simply give you the answer without all the fuss?

A publishing optimist would rightly point out that there’s more to a content website than answers to specific questions. Sometimes you don’t even know what the question is, other than something vague like “what’s going on?”

Also, a website can provide other things, like a community.

But that’s not today’s topic.

Yesterday I was thinking about how publishers can divorce themselves from platforms. It annoys me that everybody has to jump through Google’s hoops, and that if you want to succeed on LinkedIn, you have to play their silly games to win with their algorithm.

Why not declare independence? Why not focus on creating a direct relationship with your market on your terms – independent of Google and social media and all that?

As I gazed through my futurescope and studied how people will be consuming content tomorrow, I realized that the big losers might be the big platforms. AI agents will make them unnecessary.

Right now, LinkedIn, Google, Facebook, and all those assorted criminals have a few things you don’t have.

First, they either reach out and grab content from all over the internet – that would be Google – or they have useful idiots like me who willingly create original content and post it to their sites. LinkedIn, Facebook, X, etc.

I’m willing to put my content on LinkedIn because that allows me to piggyback on the second thing they have that I don’t have, which is a very large audience.

Third, they have a team of programmers running tricky algorithms to maximize all of this for their benefit. To sell ads, get premium subscribers, etc.

But in tomorrowland, I’m going to have an AI agent on my phone that will know me even better than the platforms do right now (which is scary), and it will be able to find content I want to consume, people I want to connect with, conversations I want to be a part of, and so on, effectively making a platform like LinkedIn seem like 1990.

In other words, everyone will have their own customized “platform” on their own smartphone.

In this scenario, the owners of content websites won’t be jumping through Google’s hoops, they’ll be jumping through the hoops created by these AI agents.

For example, let’s think of a few things I do on a daily basis.

1. I look around at developments in media and publishing. That’s a piece of cake for the AI agent. It can provide me with a summary, a link to the article, how to contact the author, etc. There’s no need to go to the platform.
2. I create content and post it to 47 different sites. The AI agent will be able to manage that for me, and consolidate all the comments. Again, no need for a platform.
3. I engage in interesting conversations with my peers. There are several ways an AI agent could manage that, and none of them would require a platform.

So, what do you think? Which will AI kill first, publishers and content websites, or the platforms?