What we really think of when we talk about the internet is really a series of companies that are dramatically changing their products in response to AI.

And AI writ large, which means lots of different things, but it's something that generally speaking has not been good for journalism anyway. Hello and welcome to Tech Won't Save Us made in partnership with The Nation magazine. I'm your host, Maris Marks, and this week my guest is Matt Pierce. Matt is director of policy at Rebuild Local News and was formerly a reporter at the Los Angeles

Times. One of the industries being hit by the AI hype in the past few years is obviously

journalism and the media industry. And there's this concept being thrown around within the industry

that I think is actually

really important and could have some serious consequences that is worth discussing on the show.

And that's this notion of Google Zero.

At a point when Google's search engine will stop sending traffic to, you know, not just news websites,

but websites around the internet because they're

so focused on serving them AI overviews and AI generated content that is designed to keep them

on the Google platform, looking at ads there, instead of sending them off to other websites

where, you know, traditionally people would find their information, right?

Google was acting as a search engine, as a directory, not as the place where you get the information

itself. But with generative AI and with the changing business models at these companies,

that is changing. And so I wanted to have Matt back on the show to discuss, you know, what this

actually is, what it means, how this is happening,

and what the broader implications of this are. Are there ways that the media industry that

journalists can try to combat this? And what is needed to continue to support news and media,

which are so important and essential to our societies and to our understanding of the world

around us. So with all that said, I think that this is a great conversation. I really enjoyed having Matt back on the show so we could dig into all this. If you enjoy the conversation, make sure to leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice. You can share the show on social media or with any friends or colleagues who you think would learn from it. And if you do want to support the work that goes into making Tech Won't Save Us every single week, so we can keep having these critical, in-depth conversations. You can join supporters like Dan in Hamilton, Zotz from Melbourne, Australia, Lucille, from Nice, in France, and Yeti in Seattle by going to Patreon.com slash Tech Won't Save Us, where you can become a supporter as well. Thanks so much and enjoy this week's conversation. Matt, welcome back to Tech Won't Save Us. So good to be here again, Paris. I love coming on your show. Thanks so much. It's always great to chat with you. You know, I'm always keeping up with your work and what you're writing about because, you know, obviously it's of interest to me as someone who is at least somewhat adjacent to the journalism world and certainly interested in like when journalism

is affected, I think democracy is affected. So we need to be, you know, clear out on making sure that

it is well funded and robust and these sorts of things. Now, obviously, the past few years, when we've

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