Welcome to The Upgrade

Welcome to my weekly newsletter, which focuses on the intersection of AI, media, and storytelling. A special welcome to my new readers from NBC, Blizzard, Bank of America, and many other top organizations—you’re in good company!

In today’s issue:

• The Week’s Top AI Stories 📰

• 🎓 20% off the MindStudio Academy: Learn AI Today! ⚡️

• 🎧Podcast: AI Meets Aristotle with Filmmaker Peter Frelik

• 🎙️The Big Interview: Founder David Arkin on AI, SEO and Predictions for Publishers

The Week’s Top AI Stories

Top AI Headlines

• OpenAI debuts GPT-4o ‘omni’ model now powering ChatGPT — TechCrunch

• OpenAI departure shows doomers have lost the AI fight — Axios

• Could Google’s AI push cause a rift with YouTube creators? — Fast Company

• Dance videos of Modi, rival turn up AI heat in India election — Reuters

• Google's AI search revamp puts publishers in a quandary — AFP News

Ethics, Society, & Safety

• Senators grill top U.S. intelligence officials about how they’ll stop AI-armed adversaries from influencing the 2024 election — Fortune

• AI and deepfakes blur reality in India elections — BBC News

• Google's call-scanning AI could dial up censorship by default, privacy experts warn — TechCrunch

• The man who turned his dead father into a chatbot — BBC News

• Prepare to Get Manipulated by Emotionally Expressive Chatbots — WIRED

Legal, Policy & Copyright

• Senators’ AI report urges $32 billion in emergency spending for research and safeguards — Fast Company

• 63% of surveyed Americans want government legislation to prevent super-intelligent AI from ever being achieved — PC Gamer

• Nvidia, Databricks Sued in Latest AI Copyright Class Actions — Bloomberg

AI in the Workplace

• How AI could make workers more productive – but paid less — The Hill

• AI is like a 'tsunami' hitting the labor force, IMF chief says — Fox Business

• Jobseekers and recruiters are both using AI in hiring. It's chaos. — Business Insider

• AI For Career Advancement: Unprecedented Opportunity – Or Ethical And Legal Quagmire? — Forbes

AI Tools

• OpenAI and Google are launching supercharged AI assistants. Here’s how you can try them out. — MIT Technology Review

• These 3 AI editors can help polish your prose — Fast Company

• 4 AI tools to supercharge visual content creation — MarTech

🎓Next week: MindStudio Academy! 💻

Ready to learn the fastest way to build no-code AI-powered apps and automations? The Upgrade is partnering with MindStudio to lead the MindStudio Academy. ⚡️

The next cohort starts on Saturday, May 18th at 7pm ET / 4pm PT. Only a few spots left, so don’t wait!

SAVE 20% with code: THEUPGRADE20

💡 The Big Interview: David Arkin on AI and SEO for Publishers🗞️

David Arkin is the founder and CEO of David Arkin Consulting, which helps solve media companies’ biggest challenges: growing audience and revenue.

Peter: Tell me about how your consultancy got started and when you began your entrepreneurial journey.

David Arkin: About a year into COVID, a friend and I launched a site in Dallas called Checkout DFW to provide useful information for people moving to Texas. We ran that site, had a great time doing it, and ended up selling it. After that, I decided to reach out to people in the industry to see what they needed and if I could start doing some consulting. Pretty quickly I established different programs like fractional services, a branded content program, an SEO program, and we're launching a social media program.

Peter: Let's double-click on SEO. With generative AI and content pollution flooding Google results, what's your read of the current SEO landscape, and is AI an issue or opportunity for your clients?

David Arkin: Two key things are happening: 1) Google's realignment around EAT (Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness), which ties well to strong content, and 2) AI-generated content swallowing up non-unique content. Publishers creating commoditized content are getting impacted, especially in competitive markets. But if you connect the EAT principles with using AI appropriately, you can have a winning recipe. Prove your content is original, sourced correctly, and of solid quality. Link, cite sources, and use documents/PDFs to support the work. Also, personalization and user-based content like Reddit is ranking well. Having past authority isn't enough anymore - each article must demonstrate EAT.

Peter: How are you using AI in your own business for process optimizations, automations, marketing or operations?

David Arkin: I use AI a lot for social media posts on LinkedIn, which has been helpful. I use it for prospecting emails and creating presentation decks to provide a good foundation to start with. AI is great for brainstorming brand names and creating logos. I redid our logo in AI and then had a graphic design intern refine the best options, which worked really well. For me, the criteria are: will this make things more efficient, maintain my voice, get me unstuck on something, and help my business grow? It doesn't need to check all those boxes, but those are the main ways I'm applying AI.

Peter: Do the newsrooms and publishers you work with have generative AI policies in place yet?

David Arkin: Not enough of them do. Many publishers and people in different departments are just doing their own thing with AI without clear expectations. Organizations need a one-pager on why they're using AI, what they will and won't use it for, how to handle copyright, and where they will disclose AI usage. We build those standards and criteria in partnership when we work with a publisher. Even if the AI landscape is constantly changing, you need baselines on responsible usage, fact-checking processes, and transparency or else it'll be very hard to corral later.

Peter: What's your prediction for where things are headed with AI for news and publishers?

David Arkin: By the end of this year, most publishers will figure out the low-hanging fruit applications of AI for optimization, social, SEO, etc. The next frontier is how AI can enable more original content and the creation of entire AI-driven products like newsletters, video scripts, or revenue strategies. We'll see more development of AI as the engine that updates content across publisher platforms. The magic will really start to happen when AI capabilities are aligned to lift up new products and business models.

Don’t be shy—hit reply if you have thoughts or feedback. I’d love to connect with you!

Until next week,

Peter

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