Thanks to ChatGPT and chatbots, the term AI is now part of modern discourse and everyday language more than ever before.

However, Artificial Intelligence encompasses many things.

Jodie Hopperton, lead of the INMA Product & Tech Initiative, recently led the Los Angeles Tech Innovation Study Tour and shared her learnings from the tour during a Product & Tech Town Hall.

Google, Apple, OpenAI

The big three companies experimenting with AI — Google, Apple, and OpenAI — made announcements earlier this year regarding updates to their platforms and technologies. 

For example, Open AI and Google are developing tools that offer real-time language translation and search for different devices. Open AI has a prototype of SearchGPT for desktop, which will rely on the “the strength of our AI models to give you fast answers with clear and relevant sources.” Apple has its branded AI feature, known as Apple Intelligence for its iPhone products that will have a search option on devices and will function across multiple applications. 

One major area Hopperton discussed is the relationship between AI and large language models (LLMs), including Llama (Meta), OpenAI (ChatGPT), Anthropic (Claude), and Gemini (Google)

There are dozens of other smaller, different applications that layer onto the current LLMs. News companies need to remain vigilant about robots.txt, which Hopperton called it “a gentleman’s agreement.” There is no safeguard to content being scraped as not all companies honor robots.text. It’s best for media brands to measure which bots are scraped from their site and work with a cybersecurity firm, who can handle that type of work, to a degree. 

Based in Los Angeles, Hopperton has access to the latest insights and technologies from companies like OpenAI, Google and Apple. These types of companies are expecting innovative, business-driven approaches from news organisations and media brands.

When thinking about partnerships, news publishers need to consider experimentation and what that could look like utilising AI tools, Hopperton said.:

“Open AI, in particular, is very vocal about this. They want to understand how news organisations can use the tools internally, externally — what they’re seeing, what they’re finding, how does content go in? They are really going into deep experimentation.”

Since there are so many ongoing developments, it’s hard to say what content will work the best with a certain tool. With regard to white-label products, it’s likely AI companies will partner with news organisations in the development of white-label products. Perhaps these products will include usage that goes beyond the consumer perspective, and address the needs of news organisations. 

“As more and more consumers use the tools, then they’ll start understanding where they need that augmented response,” she said.

What does this all mean for new organisations? 

The possibilities will continue to reveal themselves but Hopperton notes that there will be less reliance on Google. Between Parata and Perplexity, answer engines will become more prevalent and accurate in addressing questions.

“Ultimately what it means is less search, it’s less questions, it’s more about what’s the question and what’s the actual answer and giving consumers answers,” Hopperton said.

What 2025 holds

The next 12 months will be critical as change is not only expected but already taking place. 

News companies should think of content buckets within an entire information ecosystem, Hopperton said. In determining the value of content, the industry has to look beyond the traditional news. Though content can be niche and suited to certain interests, it’s critical for the information to be accurate. In an age of misinformation and disinformation, the news industry must remain an arbiter of factual information. 

Hopperton explained how OpenAI recently launched a voice and speech-based product: “It’s incredible. It’s like having a conversation with someone.” 

Voice and speech-based products are new, evolving tools and create the potential for exciting opportunities for the news industry, she said: “AI lends itself to speech and voice. It’s much more intuitive to people. I’m convinced it’s going to move in that direction.”

The move away from text and search lends itself well for the growth of AI tools like answer engines and multimodal formats — think audio and speech voice and speech. Though it’s very early and tools will change, it’s important to remember no one company or person has all the answers, Hopperton said. News organisations should evolve their internal and external products and communications while designing and positioning themselves for the future with AI in mind.

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