Headlines You Should Know

 

Journalism’s Evolution Continues as More Newsrooms Get in on AI Deals

There seem to be two distinct routes newsrooms take with AI these days: licensing deals or litigation. The New York Times is the standout example of the latter while more and more news organizations choose the former. Last week, News Corp. was the latest to sign a deal with OpenAI, joining an impressive list that includes the Associated Press, Axel Springer, Dotdash Meredith, and the Financial Times.

Journalism has historically been late to the game with technology, but the industry is creating a new playbook that includes AI. Every publisher knows this is the way of the future and wants in on the action in some form, even if it’s not a licensing deal that represents a new revenue stream. Gannett, for instance, is infusing the technology into its human-generated content with AI summaries at the top of articles.

What OpenAI does with all these licensing agreements remains to be seen. Are they purely sources of training data for the new model OpenAI revealed it is working on this morning? Might there be a new capability that works similarly to Google News? Perhaps content from outlets with licensing deals will have a longer shelf life or greater visibility than those that don't.

Once we see the impact of these deals, we can adapt communications and media relations strategies to find new opportunities. Newsrooms are just signing on now, and eventually, there will be a trickle-down effect for public relations and communications professionals that could make media coverage even more valuable.

Elsewhere …

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• Elon Musk’s xAI Raises $6 Billion to Fund Its AI Race
• How AI is Arming Cities in the Battle for Climate Resilience
• OpenAI Forms New Safety and Security Committee
• AI Tutors Are Quietly Changing How Kids in the US Study

Tips and Tricks

 Speak it into existence

What’s happening: The latest trend in AI is multimodal tools — those that can work with written text, images, and audio. AI tools with capabilities across mediums give you options for how to interact, so you don’t just have to type your inputs into a chatbox window and maybe even overthink your prompt.

Speaking to the AI tool directly — or even uploading a voice memo with stream-of-consciousness thoughts to an app like Otter that can create a transcript — can make the interaction more conversational and offer a different workflow.

Why it matters: As AI models improve, the intricacies of “prompt engineering” become less important. Sure, you always need some core elements to help produce a quality output, like explaining who the audience is and giving enough context and supporting information, but it becomes less about how you say it and more about making sure you include those elements. Speaking them may be a less burdensome way to start.

Try it out: ChatGPT’s mobile app gives you the ability to speak directly to it. Some laptops may have speech-to-text capabilities that serve the same purpose. If you want to hear the response instead of read it, you can do that in both the mobile app and on the web by clicking the speaker icon that says “Read Aloud” when you hover over it. If you just want to speak your thoughts as a first step, you can continue the conversation by typing back and forth with the AI.

If your tool of choice is Gemini, you can click on the microphone icon to speak your input instead of typing it. For Claude, you’ll need to first get a transcript of your voice memo (which is rumored to be easier soon, thanks to a new AI feature in iOS 18).

Quote of the Week

“Amsterdam, Singapore, Houston, Tokyo, and Copenhagen are all cities that have leveraged this technology to strengthen resilience to flooding and climate-related challenges. In each case, digital twins were able to build on and leverage existing data teams and enhance the cities’ data-driven operations.”

— Jeff Merritt, Head of Urban Transformation at the World Economic Forum, to Reuters on how AI helps fight climate change