Chief AI officer is among the many latest job titles within the media trade — and for apparent causes. Seemingly each writer is working to find out the best way to adapt to the period of AI Overviews. Much less apparent, although, is what the function of chief AI officer truly entails and why a media firm would wish to appoint an AI overseer.
For The Washington Put up, that motive why got here when AI went from being a instrument for sure components of the corporate to changing into a essential element of the information writer’s enterprise and operations. “That transition level is the place the [chief] AI officer’s wanted,” mentioned Sam Han, who was appointed the Put up’s chief AI officer in June.
“We wish to attain 200 million paying clients. How are you going to use AI to enhance consumer engagement by offering AI-powered merchandise? How are you going to use [AI to] assist newsroom and companies to enhance their operations? After which on the identical time, how are you going to use AI to optimize subscription income and commercial income? That’s the core mission of [chief] AI officer,” Han mentioned.
In a reside recording of the Digiday Podcast through the Digiday Publishing Summit in Miami final week, Han defined how his new function is supporting components of the Put up’s enterprise, akin to in driving subscriptions by means of its dynamic paywall. Working example: the Put up examined an AI-powered paywall towards its conventional paywall and noticed the AI-powered paywall ship a 20% enhance in buyer lifetime worth, based on Han.
“One of the best profit of getting that’s no extra conferences to determine what guidelines [to set as the basis for the paywall],” Han mentioned. “Thanksgiving sale’s arising, how ought to we modify the paywall guidelines to accommodate extra subscription through the gross sales value? We can have conferences after conferences after conferences, after which the chief with the biggest voice will win, proper? That’s all gone now. It’s all pushed by machine studying.”
Listed here are just a few highlights from the dialog, which have been edited for size and readability.
AI-powered dynamic paywall
We constructed a machine studying mannequin referred to as reinforcement studying and analyze a buyer’s historical past when it comes to engagement: what number of occasions this buyer noticed free articles, what number of occasions that buyer noticed the paywall [or registration] wall, [a person’s subscription churn history, an article value’s, etc.]. We put all these elements into consideration. After which the machine studying algorithm comes to a decision for this buyer.
AI-powered subscription presents
Our subscription advertising staff created versatile entry merchandise, [such as] weekly cross, each day cross. We’re experimenting with pay-per-article now. We wish to deliver all these into the paywall determination. It’s not simply displaying a paywall. It’s a paywall containing which merchandise.
AI-related guidelines
The newsroom had its personal AI coverage, like human within the loop, however we didn’t have tips for the general group. We’ve got our personal language mannequin, chatbot model [for] inner use. We even have enterprise ChatGPT model out there. And we now have Google Docs, which additionally has Gemini in there. After which particular person reporters or engineers have their personal or private accounts.
We’ve got very strict tips saying, if it’s business- essential, delicate data, use language mannequin hosted by us internally. In any other case you should utilize enterprise model of ChatGPT and so forth. If paperwork are in Google Docs already, it’s already secure, we now have appropriate classification of doc and so forth, so then you definately’re allowed to make use of Gemini to do sure duties.
AI within the org chart
I work as head of AI below [the] CTO group. So it grew to become a pure transition to take a seat below CTO, and I work very carefully with the CTO and nice help from [the] CTO workplace. So I feel that was the nice match for our group to have it below there.
