USA Today Launches AI Chatbot, Entering a New Era
▼ Summary
– Gannett is launching DeeperDive, an AI tool that converses with readers, summarizes journalism, and suggests content across its publications.
– The tool aims to combat declining traffic from search engines, which CEO Mike Reed attributes partly to Google’s AI Overview feature.
– DeeperDive provides fact-based answers using only verified journalism and excludes opinion pieces, with responses grounded in cited articles.
– Developed by Taboola, the tool leverages data from over 600 million daily readers and 11,000 publishers to ensure accuracy and avoid conflicting information.
– Gannett and Taboola plan to explore agentic tools for shopping decisions, capitalizing on their audience’s high purchase intent.
The media landscape is shifting rapidly, and USA Today is embracing artificial intelligence with the launch of its new interactive tool, DeeperDive. This innovative chatbot allows readers to engage in conversation, receive summaries of key journalistic insights, and discover related content from across the publisher’s extensive network of sites.
Mike Reed, CEO of Gannett and the USA Today Network, introduced the tool at the WIRED AI Power Summit in New York. He emphasized that the platform now offers a trusted AI answer engine where visitors can ask questions and explore topics in depth. Reed noted that the tool is already performing exceptionally well, providing users with a more dynamic way to interact with news content.
Many publishers have expressed concern over the growing influence of AI, particularly as chatbots trained on their material now summarize articles and redirect traffic that once came through traditional search engines. Reed highlighted that Google’s AI Overview has significantly reduced referral traffic across the publishing sector. He warned of future risks to any content distribution model heavily reliant on SEO, signaling a need for adaptation in how media companies connect with audiences.
In response, Gannett has pursued licensing agreements with AI firms such as Amazon and Perplexity, while also taking measures to block unauthorized web scraping. DeeperDive represents a strategic move to leverage generative AI not as a threat, but as an opportunity to capture reader attention through more personalized engagement.
Replacing the standard search bar, DeeperDive proactively suggests questions users might want to explore, for instance, “How does Trump’s Fed policy affect the economy?” It then delivers concise answers supported by fact-based articles from across USA Today’s publications. Reed stressed the importance of grounding responses in verified journalism rather than opinion pieces, ensuring reliability and accuracy.
The tool also offers Gannett valuable insights into reader interests, which could open up new revenue opportunities. Developed in collaboration with advertising company Taboola, DeeperDive uses fine-tuned open-source models and draws from a vast network of over 600 million daily readers. Adam Singolda, Taboola’s CEO, explained that the system anchors every answer in sourced articles and includes sentence-level citations, refusing to generate responses when source information conflicts.
Looking ahead, Reed revealed that Gannett and Taboola are exploring agentic tools to assist readers with shopping decisions, capitalizing on the high purchase intent of their audience. This direction points toward a future where AI not only informs but also facilitates consumer action.
(Source: Wired)
