#44 - A Machine Readable World

As the highly-anticipated release of GPT-4 approaches, expectations are running high for the latest in language models. It's expected to be a multimodal model, able to interpret not only text, but also images, videos, and more. This will make the world more "machine-readable" than ever before. But what happens when you combine this newfound intelligence with the vast data trails left by people on the internet? Personal photos, videos, and audio can now be read and mined at scale in new interactive ways. As we eagerly await GPT-4's release, we must ask ourselves: do we truly understand the consequences of this technology before it falls into the wrong hands?

This and more in this week's Wayfinder,

IN FOCUS

The 2023 Future Today Institute Tech Trends report was launched at SXSW this weekend and is now live. There are 666 trends to follow this year, categorized by?technology?and by?industry. Here are the highlights of the dedicated news chapter:

• Generative AI tools are rewriting workflows
• Transformer models are revolutionizing search engines
• Low levels of trust in news globally make news organizations vulnerable.
• Journalists need technical knowledge to trace stories, protect themselves from cyberattacks, and monetize their work.
• Legacy media companies remain skeptical of changing their operations.

REPORTS

According to a new Reuters Institute factsheet women's representation in news media leadership sees little improvement. Only 22% of top editors are women out of the 180 surveyed across 240 brands. This is only a slight increase from 21% in 2022.

The new WAN-IFRA's World Press Trends report is out and it indicates a challenging and unpredictable business environment for publishers due to factors such as rising costs and changing advertising markets. While 55.4% of respondents feel pessimistic about the next 12 months, almost a third (31%) are very optimistic about their businesses in three years.

News organizations shouldn't give up on trying to generate revenue from young people. 51% of Gen Z (16- to 24-year-olds) pay for or donate to news, and that number rises to 63% among younger Millennials (25- to 31-year-olds) according to a new Media Insights Project Report.?

SOCIAL

TikTok has a major headache. Governments around the world raise concerns over the social media app's data handling practices and security risks. The United States has taken steps to give its president the power to ban TikTok and other apps deemed security risks, while Canada has joined the US and Europe in banning the use of TikTok on government devices.

Meanwhile Denmark's public-service broadcaster has advised staff not to have TikTok on their work phones. DR is the first news organisation to issue such advice.

+ TikTok is taking on YouTube by introducing Series, large paywalled collections of videos.

+ Meta mulls a Twitter competitor codenamed ‘P92’.

+ Google has released a major redesign of Google Trends.

AI

AI is changing how journalists work. It's not just text-generating models like ChatGPT, but also other tools like fact-checking, content recommendation, sentiment analysis, and speech-to-text transcription that are important. Explore some of the essential non-writing AI applications that every journalist should know.

Other AI-links:

• Microsoft released Visual ChatGPT.
• An overview of all the major contenders in the chatbot space.
• You are not a parrot and a chatbot is not a human.?
• Slack has added ChatGpt.
• What Dall-E reveals about human creativity.
• Mirror and Express owner publishes first articles written using AI.
• Why publishers and regulators need to wake up to the threat posed by ChatGPT.

PRODUCT

Artifact, a social news app powered by machine learning is the latest hot property in the news landscape. Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom explains what drew him to this space and?how his new app’s underlying technology will serve to differentiate it from the competition.

Spotify revealed their latest interface, a vertically-scrolling way to discover new shows. The new interface gives listeners a more active role in the audio discovery process and gives creators more space to share their work. Spotify has also unveiled Autoplay for Podcasts?

+ How product bridge roles have evolved in the newsroom.?

+ Sport broadcasting is becoming a streaming game. Lot's of interesting take-aways in Seven Leagues digital trends report.

SUBSCRIPTIONS

In a world where news never sleeps,?micro-bundles are gaining traction.?This week, The Financial Times announced that it would be?expanding its micro-bundle FT edit app to the US, providing?a handpicked selection of eight stories?a day to new customers.?Espresso at The Economist and 12 at Tamedia are other examples?of the rise of micro-bundles.

+ Poool, a membership and subscription platform, has released a Conversion Funnel Benchmark Report aimed at helping publishers improve their subscription strategies.

MISCELLANEOUS

Take a look behind the scenes at the News Movement, a media company founded by former Dow Jones executives. With a staff of reporters averaging 25 years old, the News Movement creates personalized news content for platforms such as TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, and Twitter.

Mediahuis has not one, but two finalists selected for the 2023 INMA Global Media Awards! Mediahuis Noord made the shortlist with their Article DNA pilot, a best practice entry focused on the secret life of article characteristics. Meanwhile, Mediahuis Ireland's transformation of local news?also made the cut.

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As always feel free to share this newsletter with friends & colleagues!

Ezra Eeman, Mediahuis Change Director, News - Editorial