How The Economist plans to defend itself against AI

The Economist president Luke Bradley-Jones revealed how he plans to steer the 183-year-old title through the era of generative artificial intelligence, writes Dominic Ponsford of Press-Gazette.

Ponsford writes, “He said The Economist has invested in marketing to ensure readers come to the title for its expertise in these topics and said they were developing new content for premium products aimed at their engaged subscribers in these areas.

“The Economist Group has not signed any content licensing deals with generative AI companies and it is also yet to join any of the lawsuits brought over content theft.

“Bradley-Jones said his title’s focus is instead around ensuring the product remains a sufficiently premium experience to keep competition from AI-written answer engines at bay.

“He said: ‘The LLM and AI ecology is evolving very, very quickly, and it’s going to be extremely hard for any brand to get a foothold within that ecology. Actually the most important thing is to work out how you must survive outside of that ecology.'”

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Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.