The entire process of content creation, distribution, consumption, and licensing is about to be turned on its head
Last week I did a podcast on how AI agents will change content consumption, and some listeners wanted to hear more about that. Coincidentally, Bo Sacks distributed a very good article on that topic by Matthew Scott Goldstein, which I’ll link below. You should read it.
To get the idea of an AI agent for media, think back to those old news feeds that would ask you to pick your favorite topics and design your own home page. You could organize them into a custom dashboard – like creating your own front page. The Yahoo home page worked that way. You might have sports on top, then politics, then lifestyle, and so on.
To understand AI agents, take that concept and multiply it by 100. In your sports section, you’ll be able to say which sports, which teams, which players – maybe only the players on your fantasy football team – and which writers you want to follow.
You’ll be able to do the same with every section of your daily news, getting very granular about exactly what you want to hear.
That is, if you want to hear it. AI can transform content from an article to five bullet points, or a summary, or convert it into audio, and soon, video. Or the other way around. After you listen to a podcast, your AI agent will be able to give you a transcript, or a summary of the key points. You’ll be able to listen to an opinion piece and ask what the other side has to say about that.
You won’t need ABC news to “fact check” a politician. Your AI agent will do it for you – from whatever point of view you prefer.
I’m just scratching the surface of what’s possible to give you an idea of what working with an AI agent could be like. Just as Spotify and Netflix give you suggestions on songs and shows you might appreciate, your AI agent will be able to recommend other sources and services.
This won’t be limited to news, or articles from websites. Your AI agent will have access to social media, videos, articles, books, magazines, podcasts … and it will be able to scour all that material, find what you want, and present it in the style and format you prefer.
If you want Bilbo Baggins to summarize and explain what’s going on with Rings of Power, your AI will do that for you.
I hope that gives you a sense of the possibilities.
I mentioned Bilbo Baggins on purpose, because that introduces us to the next big element of this. Copyright.
Somebody owns the rights to Bilbo Baggins. If I want to use him, I’ll have to pay for the privilege.
It might work something like this. I tell my AI that I want to watch Bilbo give me summaries of what’s going on in Rings of Power, and to present important background details from Tolkien’s works. That would require a license to use Bilbo’s image, access to Rings of Power footage, and access to Tolkien’s collected works. My AI would then contact the people who own those rights, negotiate a payment, and present me with a solution. All in microseconds.
Whoever owns the book rights would have a fee structure.
Access to the text costs $20. A license to summarize or explain the text is another $20. The use of Bilbo’s image and voice costs 10 cents per minute of video footage, or 5 cents per minute of audio. And on and on it goes.
This means that publishers are going to have to start thinking about how to license their content to AI agents. It won’t be left sitting out there in the open, on a web page, where pirates and rapscallions mistakenly and unlawfully use it for free. The content will be protected and doled out by permission.
AI agents will open up the world for consumers. For myself, I can imagine going on a walk and asking my agent to summarize John Vervake’s works on Neoplatonism, then I’ll pick one area I want to delve into a little deeper and ask it to create a video that I can watch that evening.
It will be a whole new world, and content creators need to start planning now.
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