Is A.I. Killing Blogs?
Curiously, all this talk about artificial intelligence seems to miss these bigger truths.
Yes, Deepseek is causing everyone to lose their minds, more on that in the future…
But, I read a ton of stuff online and tend to get it from everywhere. On one occasion, I came across this blog post on Twitter/X. I suggest you read it, but you don’t have to. The just of the post was that this travel lifestyle writer thinks Google and A.I. are killing her blog.
The simple fact is that her stated loss in traffic was happening long before A.I. hit it big. We’ve always known that the ad-based revenue structure was crumpling for more than a decade. I’m speaking as someone who’s been doing it a lot longer than Amanda while even having my meager blog listed on the first page of Google for a while too. I tend to say, so what. Google likes you today, but tomorrow, not so much.
Perhaps the most unusual part of this is that she considers the use of her openly-available-on-the-Internet blog to train an A.I. an act of theft. It’s a time and tested reaction to new technologies. Back when iTunes was coming out, the musician Prince thought that was stealing from him. If I recall, he vowed never to have his music online… but.
Technophobia: It’s the response of fear to any new tech is the most common thing I’ve seen since the advent of something new in my tech industry life. But, you could go back even further to find people saying that phone would end in-person conversation. Some even thought the phone would electrocute them to death, perhaps others thought that same phone could talk to the departed. Today, we mostly avoid telephone calls in favor of text messages.
There is another truism that I think is apt. I’m forgetting the quote, and I hope it comes to me, but it essentially says don’t bet your life on someone else’s platform. If it’s valuable and essential, it should never be in control of external companies. In this case, the wayward travel blogger was entirely dependent on the algorithmic whims of Google. It was always a matter of time unfortunately. What would have been the alternative? I really don’t know.
Will blogs die? No, absolutely not. Will the ad-generated independent van-life blogger still exist in a few years? Unlikely. The worst thing anyone can do about change is fight it. My advice to her is if she really loves it, keep on writing it out and embrace what’s coming. Your kids will look back on that A.I. that does their chores while speaking in the style of you as a gift.
As always, thanks for reading. I have no SoundCloud to subscribe to, so it would be great if you forwarded this email or link to anyone you think might be interested.