Pete Pachal

1 week ago | mediacopilot.substack.com | Pete Pachal

As the world wakes up to the dawn of an AI-mediated internet, publishers are in a race to get out of the clicks business. While that's probably healthy, the rush to diversify shouldn't exaggerate what's happening. We're still a long way from Google Zero, and the data, at least at this point, suggests it would take radical change to get us there. Not that radical change won't happen, but it’s probably further out than some recent headlines might suggest.

1 week ago | fastcompanybrasil.com | Pete Pachal

O que começou como mais um experimento com inteligência artificial rapidamente virou um acidente editorial em cadeia. Um artigo publicado pelo jornal "Chicago Sun-Times", nos EUA, apresentava sugestões de leituras para as férias – só que a maior parte dos títulos simplesmente não existia. Criada por IA e revisada de forma negligente, a lista passou pelo crivo da redação, foi distribuída a milhares de assinantes e ainda republicada por pelo menos outro jornal.

1 week ago | mediacopilot.substack.com | Pete Pachal

Remember back when Apple’s notification summaries garbled the news to create completely made-up headlines? Those erroneous summaries sure could have used a fact-checker. Obviously humans could never keep up with the scale of machine-generated content, but is it possible to fight AI lies with AI verification? As newsrooms push deeper with AI tools, AI fact-checking might be inevitable—as darkly ironic as the whole idea might sound.

2 weeks ago | mediacopilot.substack.com | Pete Pachal

I was going to write something about AI data privacy in media this week—especially now that OpenAI is being compelled to retain even deleted chats—but as a former newsroom leader, I found the recent story about Wikipedia editors revolting over AI summaries on the site too compelling to ignore. It's the classic mistake of a poorly communicated rollout, which always increases tensions with creative teams. But when AI is involved it can push those tensions to the breaking point.

2 weeks ago | mediacopilot.substack.com | Pete Pachal

Looking at the media industry for the past two years, it sometimes feels like it’s just been one long season of layoffs. While the rise of AI hasn’t directly led to many of the issues the media is dealing with today, Business Insider made it plain that it’s certainly a big factor, committing to being “all-in” on AI in the same memo that announced it was cutting 21% of its staff.