--- title: News in the world of agents description: What does an AI-powered landscape look like? --- [![logo (2)](https://www.hbmadvisory.com/hubfs/Assets%20HBM%20Theme/Images/logo%20(2).svg)](https://www.hbmadvisory.com/) [![logo (3)](https://www.hbmadvisory.com/hubfs/Assets%20HBM%20Theme/Images/logo%20(3).svg)](https://www.hbmadvisory.com/) - [Home](https://www.hbmadvisory.com/en-gb/) - [Advisory](https://www.hbmadvisory.com/advisory) - [121 Consulting](https://www.hbmadvisory.com/121-consulting) - [Content Review](https://www.hbmadvisory.com/contentreview) - [Testimonials](https://www.hbmadvisory.com/testimonial) - [Contact](https://www.hbmadvisory.com/contact-us) # News in the world of agents [Alan Hunter](https://www.hbmadvisory.com/media-hunter/author/alan-hunter) 29 May 2026 9 min read **What does an AI-powered landscape look like?** What’s the view like at the frontier of the AI-and-news landscape? This week I had the opportunity to have a look when I attended Signals at Scale, an invitation-only workshop in Copenhagen. The event and its three precursors were organised by [David Caswell](https://www.linkedin.com/in/caswelldavid/) and [Shuwei Fang](https://www.linkedin.com/in/shuwei-fang/), two people who have researched this area deeply and have resolved to bring people with journalistic, policy, academic and technical expertise together to try to produce a positive societal outcome from the seismic changes happening around us. The event was held under Chatham House rules so I can’t say who said what in our discussions but it was a real eye-opener into a possible future for news providers and consumers alike. The core task was to debate what an AI-mediated future information ecosystem could look like and what needs to be done to get there. Crucially, we were asked to look at the question through a positive lens and to think transformatively. The rationale was that most attention and investment at present is focused on incremental changes that often produce socially negative outcomes – an obvious example being job losses caused by AI-based automation. Our challenge was to imagine a landscape of fundamental changes that produce positive results for society at large. We are seeing some of these changes already. People are already talking about the end of the “attention economy”. It is no longer enough just to show audiences content and hope they engage with it – the AI-mediated future is all about intent. What does the user want to know? What do they want to buy? What is more important to them, quality or price? And so on. This of course happens best at an individual level and it was a working assumption of the sessions that everyone could be served with content based on their preferences and their preferences alone. The heavy lifting will be done by agents, which will roam the digital sphere on their behalf. For news providers, this means the relationship with their readers will change from being direct to being through an intermediary agent. The human audience will turn into a machine audience. The move can be expressed as from B2C (business to consumer) to B2A2C (business to agent to consumer). Or, more likely, B2A2A2A2A2A2A2A2C, as an array of agents performing different tasks gets involved. To stand out in this environment, the feeling is that two types of journalism will prosper. First, “luxury” content, which is original, distinctive and hard to replicate by other brands. And second, commodity content – for example, one-fact news stories. The place you don’t want to be stuck is in the middle between these two extremes of the “barbell”. If you’re not differentiated enough or quick enough with commodity news, then good luck. For commodity news providers, the key requirement will be getting integrations into the infrastructure in which the agents operate. As yet, it’s unclear what that will look like and, to be honest, we didn’t find any kind of consensus in the sessions. However, from the discussions in Copenhagen I felt that most of those present wanted to make sure the new infrastructure was not simply gobbled up by one or more of the “hyper-scaler” AI companies like OpenAI, Google or Anthropic. We’ve been there before, of course, with search and none of us particularly likes where that has led us. Instead we honed in an aspiration that agreed international standards and/or governmental regulation would ensure that users were neither locked in or locked out if they chose another provider. One idea was that interaction with the agentic world should be through a “digital twin” that we as users, not the providers, own. I had two overall reflections from the conversations. First was that I remain unsure about how pervasive this new ecosystem will be in the first instance. For the first few years, I can imagine the world of digital butlers providing for all your online needs being the preserve of digital enthusiasts and the wealthy. The former will be happy to pay for it because they are all about optimising their lives through technology; the latter will want to show it off to their friends. The rest of us? I see a slower transition, if it comes. We didn’t after all jump to digital consumption of news, for example, immediately. It took time for people to change their habits and adopt something that was clearly more convenient and, mostly, cheaper. Some people still hold out now. It struck me that perhaps the challenge of driving adoption of an agentic world is perhaps more of a marketing challenge than a technical one. The providers of these services have work to do to convince people that having always-on agents constantly seeking out the news and information that you want is a good thing and not in some way creepy. Second, the discussions seemed so far away from what most publishers are discussing in relation to AI. Many have found comfort in the idea that AI is “just another tool”. Of course it’s much more than that – it’s a whole new operating system. To borrow from Rasmus Kleis Nielsen, these sessions were emphatically for the “vanguard” in AI terms, not the rearguard. But I think the rearguard needs at least to involve itself in these discussions.This agentic world, however big it becomes, needs their input or they risk becoming helpless casualties of this revolution. You cannot “wait and see” and absent yourself from these discussions: they could be existential – in its real, not popular, sense. We will be urging our clients to address these issues urgently and with strategic intent. David and Shuwei will expand upon their takeaways in a far more erudite and complete way than me in the weeks to come. I urge you to watch out for that. In the meantime, [here are some excellent reflections](https://larsadriangiske.substack.com/p/signals-at-scale-a-look-into-the) from the previous Signals at Scale event at Harvard by Lars Adrian Giske. It’s long but worth your while. ## Next blog post ## [Bezos is right about news profits](https://www.hbmadvisory.com/media-hunter/bezos-is-right-about-news-profits) [Read more](https://www.hbmadvisory.com/media-hunter/bezos-is-right-about-news-profits) ![logo (2)](https://www.hbmadvisory.com/hubfs/Assets%20HBM%20Theme/Images/logo%20(2).svg) Hunter Brunt Media Ltd. 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