In preparation for an in-depth report on AI and the media, we spoke to several experts in the field via email. One such expert is Jeff Chang, Chief Digital Officer at Condé Nast Taiwan.

What are your current most common use cases of AI?

The value propositions that lifestyle media provide are the guidances and inspiration for the audience in their lifestyle needs. Currently, most media companies use AI to match the content or native advertising relevant to user’s interests by the tags or keywords from proactive search or passive recommendations. The matching efficiency comes largely with the level of capability in natural language processing (NLP) algorithms or machine learning.

How else will you use AI in the coming year?

The core value of a media company is its relationship with audience. The more loyal of its audience, the higher the value a media company has for both the audience and brand advertisers. I would like to see more exploration in understanding audience needs through the AI-led content interaction.

What excites you most about the longer-term future of AI, and why?

In the longer term, AI will definitely transform the media industry in every aspect from content creation, content delivery, and content value capture. In the times of “everyone is a medium and influencer”, companies will lose to traffic-based media platforms and be eliminated by the competition empowered by AI. I am excited to see the evolution of media industry by the push from an AI revolution.

What concerns you most about the longer-term future of AI, and why?

It concerns me that the excitement and disruption out of AI technology will shift lifestyle media companies’ business strategy away from the essence of content value propositions that I mentioned above: lifestyle guidances and inspiration. In other words, content as a service.

What are some of the best AI tools (already available for use) that you can recommend to media companies to investigate immediately?

ChatGPT can be combined with search engines in user-proactive lifestyle need scenarios to improve the content search experience.