The impact of AI, tech platforms and regulation on the media landscape

The impact of AI, tech platforms and regulation on the media landscape

This fourth and final Anchor Event of Ditchley’s 2025 Media Programme considered where AI is taking the news and information environment, both inside and outside the newsroom, how news organisations need to adapt, and what, if anything, can and should regulators and policymakers do to steer that course. 

In 2025, AI has been a wrecking ball to many news publishers. Features such as Google’s AI Overview, for instance, offers information summaries, meaning fewer users than ever follow up by visiting news organisations' own sites. The effect of this has been to sharply exacerbate two existing trends. The first is the weakening of established news business models that relied on traffic to media companies’ sites and apps, and the second trend is around the loss of accountability for information published online. 

Many argue that news organisations need to adapt to this new environment, diversifying their activities to make money and produce journalism in line with the way audiences are consuming information now. Others argue that AI’s answers are themselves a potential source of strength: their ability to draw on multiple data sources mean their answers will tend to become more authoritative over time, making trustworthy and personalised information available to almost everyone. 

But are there also areas where regulators need to set minimum standards? Should there be intervention, for instance, on news organisations’ data, protecting them from scraping by AI providers and avoiding the ‘free rider’ problem in newsgathering? And how should regulators and policymakers think about the responsibility of AI providers for the information (including that which might be classified as harmful, misleading or false) that they aggregate and generate