Before the internet, legacy publishers were gatekeepers. In the age of artificial intelligence, our devices will play that role, making choices that cannot be easily predicted, deciphered or reverse engineered.

This shift will make it harder for news organizations to build direct relationships with their audience. Subscription and membership programs will suffer as a result.

A new generation of devices ranging from Humane’s AiPin to Apple’s Vision Pro are coming to market with radically different form of engagement and interactivity. What these devices have in common is that they use AI as a layer to synthesize incoming information and determine what and when information should reach users. Even existing smartphones will increasingly rely on AI to triage the flood of messages, news, and media competing for our attention.

News organizations will face a stark choice when dealing with these models: participate in licensing programs that give tech companies the right to ingest, summarize, and distribute their reporting or opt-out, inviting the risk that their coverage will not reach new audiences. That dynamic will favor major publishers like The New York Times whose brand recognition will give them leverage in negotiations with tech giants — or the flexibility to develop a universe of owned-and-operated platforms.

Independent local publishers will struggle the most in this paradigm. Their potential licensing revenue is unlikely to match what they could earn with reader support.

Public media will have an opportunity in this moment. The combined reporting powers of NPR, PBS, and local public broadcasters around the country is sizeable. Operating as a network, those resources could have tremendous leverage in negotiations with tech companies looking to license trustworthy, reliable news coverage. Realizing that potential would let the public media system reenvision to thrive in the modern world, but it would also require unprecedented levels of coordination, cooperation, and willingness to change — focusing less on the distribution channel or medium of production and more on the information needed to create an informed public. The window to prepare for this future is closing, however; acting alone, local public broadcasters will find it hard to survive.

News startups, especially those taking funding from initiatives like Press Forward, will need to consider how device gatekeeping will change the rules of audience development. Trying to reuse a platform-dependent playbook for scale written in the mid-2010s is unlikely to result in impact or growth. Instead, new strategies will be needed to share essential civic information. So what should we do?

We can choose to lean into the uncertainty of this moment, reckoning honestly with the technical and economic forces that are buffeting our industry. We can think exponentially about the future, forcing ourselves to reframe existential threats like generative AI and immersive devices as opportunities. We can work incrementally toward that vision, building smartly with an eye on where we need to be.