The noise artificial intelligence has been creating so far is so loud that some of us may already be even tired of all these publications about how surprising the future of AI can be, how revolutionary it is, and so on. No matter how much we try not to concentrate on that too much, every time, a new improvement creates a ground for new discussions and debates among usual internet users and field professionals.
I thought that it was time to stop talking about generative AI and allow tech companies to improve their products. When Open AI introduced the demo video of their new GPT-4o model, the ability to have human-like conversations left me speechless. So, I realized that we have one more good reason to get back to this topic.
Although, in most cases, professionals have alarming discussions about AI in the context of job losses, one other aspect of this issue that remains unanalyzed is the business of website owners. Many of them believe that further improvements in AI platforms and the application of generative AI models can potentially kill their business, leaving them without unique visitors. How true is this, and how far is it from becoming a reality when internet users search and find what they need in one window, which will be their GPT assistant?
Some Websites Will Sustain: The Example of Gaming Platforms
Let’s be real here – certain industries and niches are so specialized and unique that they’ll always have a dedicated audience, no matter how advanced AI gets. A prime example can be gambling sites, that have a continuously growing popularity.
What we can conclude from available data is that the global gaming market is expected to surpass $350 billion by 2027. And when you dive into specifics like online gambling, the stats get even more impressive. Industry reports show the online casino and betting sector could hit $125 billion in the same timeframe.
What does this mean in the context of websites potentially getting hollowed out by AI assistants? Simple – gaming platforms occupy such a hardcore, passionate niche that they’ll keep reeling in visitors gambling for that unique experience. After all, people don’t just visit online casinos for random information; they go there for the thrill, the competition, and the immersive entertainment experiences.
You Need People to Know Your Brand
Here’s the main problem – with all this artificial intelligence around, websites need to have a strong reputation and be trusted by people if they want visitors to keep coming back. Think about it like this: if we can just ask our voice assistants for information, why would we visit random websites unless we already knew they were good and reliable?
This big change puts well-known news organizations in a great spot. Newspapers like The New York Times or The Economist aren’t just places that give you news – they’re famous brands that people naturally respect, trust, and go to for information. Does the average person care enough about world news to look for it everywhere online, especially with all this AI stuff? Probably not. However, they do care about reading what reporters and editors at the Times say about important events because the Times has spent many years building a reputation for being reliable.
The numbers show this is true. Even though fewer people are buying physical newspapers, the Times has way more than 8 million people who pay to read their website. Because when it comes to serious news reporting, people want to go to a website they know they can trust, even with all this artificial intelligence around.
Websites Are Needed for AI Platforms to Feed Them
We’ve discussed how generative AI could disrupt the standard website model. But here’s an underappreciated point – the tech titans building these powerful AI assistants need robust websites to thrive just as much as those sites may need them.
Why? Well, think about how language models like GPT work under the hood. Sure, they use cutting-edge machine learning to essentially “learn” how to communicate, sometimes even showing some signs of the potential emotional connections people might have with the tech. But at their core, they just rely on ingesting and processing gargantuan datasets scraped from Internet sources to build their knowledge bases.
This win-win situation explains why Google is so excited about improving its AI assistants with tools like LaMDA, all while still keeping the internet open to everyone. After all, if websites start to disappear, the information that AI assistants rely on will become outdated and useless. For AI assistants to keep getting smarter and offering more and more features, the massive collection of websites on the internet needs to keep growing, too. Think of it like a well that AI drinks from to stay up-to-date with all the new information out there.
So in a way, big tech companies need websites to stick around in order for their AI products to work well. As long as companies like Google and Microsoft rely on all these websites to run their popular AI services and products, they’ll have a strong reason to protect the internet and all the websites on it.
