150: The future of publishing relies on personalized AI agents

In 2025 I won’t use my Google newsfeed, and I won’t visit websites. I’ll have something far more tailored to my interests.

Here’s how this will work.

I’ll have a personalized AI agent that will both collect and analyze my interests. That is, it will ask me what I’m interested in – sports, current events, music, science, religion, all the normal stuff – but it will also observe how I spend my time. It’ll keep track of how well my intentions coincide with my actions.

My AI agent will find content I’m interested in – in any format. Video. Audio. Images. Text. Games. Whatever.

I won’t be on TikTok or realclearpolitics or LinkedIn or anything like that. I’ll have my own custom interface that incorporates content from all these sources.

I’ll set a budget for what I’m willing to spend every month on new content, and I’ll allocate that budget with some sliding scales to show my preferences. For example …

* I’d rather listen than read.
* I’d rather watch than listen.
* I want news in the morning and entertainment in the evening, but I like to listen to music on my walk after lunch.
* I prefer stories from my point of view, but I want to be challenged at least 20 percent of the time.
* I trust these sources and not these others.
* I want to read at least one physical book every two weeks.
* I’ll interact with the world under different personas, like my work persona and my hobby persona.

Over time, my AI assistant will fine tune my selections with intelligent questions. For example, “you say you want to be challenged in your beliefs, but whenever I show you an article from such and so point of view, you don’t read the whole thing. Shall I continue to prod you?”

The AI agent will know my behavior very well, but it will always defer to my preferences and aspirations.

How will publishers operate in a world like this?

* They won’t sell direct to the consumer. Their AI will negotiate with my AI. I’ll have nothing to do with it.
* The publisher will use AI to provide content in a hundred different ways.
* The same story might be text, audio, video, or a cartoon.
* Most content be digital, but there will be print on demand options.
* There’ll be a version for the well educated and the poorly educated.
* All content will be available in multiple languages.
* The publisher’s AI will respond to the market demand from all the individual AI agents.
* Human creators or editors will become brands that people will follow.
* Platforms will be irrelevant.

My crystal ball fogged up last week when I tried to understand what’s going on in Congress, so I might not have all the details right. But something like this is going to happen. How are you going to plan for it?