[jacurtis]

I think this is the world we are going to. I'm not going to get mired in the details of how it would happen, but I see this end result as inevitable (and we are already moving that way).

I expect a lot more paywalls for valuable content. General information is commoditized and offered in aggregated form through models. But when an AI is fetching information for you from a website, the publisher is still paying the cost of producing that content and hosting that content. The AI models are increasing the cost of hosting the content and then they are also removing the value of producing the content since you are just essentially offering value to the AI model. The user never sees your site.

I know Ads are unpopular here, but the truth is that is how publishers were compensated for your attention. When an AI model views the information that a publisher produces, then modifies it from its published form, and removes all ad content. Then you now have increased costs for producers, reduced compensation in producing content (since they are not getting ad traffic), and the content isn't even delivered in the original form.

The end result is that publishers now have to paywall their content.

Maybe an interesting middle-ground is if the AI Model companies compensated for content that they access similar to how Spotify compensates for plays of music. So if an AI model uses information from your site, they pay that publisher a fraction of a cent. People pay the AI models, and the AI models distribute that to the producers of content that feed and add value to the models.