The Economist prepares for a two‑track internet: one for humans and one for AI agents
The Economist is testing new ways of structuring content to be read solely by agents as AI engines increasingly surface and summarize news.
For now, the subscription publisher is experimenting with agent‑readable versions of content that already sits outside its paywall — chiefly marketing copy and B2B sales material — and restructuring those surfaces for AI answer engines.
The bet is that discovery won’t start on homepages or even in search boxes, but with AI intermediaries acting on a user’s behalf. As Josh Muncke, vp of generative AI at The Economist Group, told Digiday, the publisher is preparing for “a world with two versions of the web” — one optimized for rich, human reading experiences, and another where “agents want clear structure, questions and answers, ideally text,” not carousels and feature art.
Continue reading this article on digiday.com. Sign up for Digiday newsletters to get the latest on media, marketing and the future of TV.
Related Knowledge Center: Inside the newsroom
As newsrooms struggle with rickety business models and precarious finances — as well as new technologies — they are deploying an array of editorial responses.
The Times and its critics | Washington Post mortem
Related Knowledge Center: Artificial intelligence
On top of a failing business model, newsrooms must navigate the powerful — and not fully reliable — new capabilities of artificial intelligence and the deployment of large language models.
State of the business model | Copyright and intellectual property