Report: The Future Is 'Voice Interfacing'

Amy Webb

If you think technology has shaken up the media -- just wait, you haven't seen anything yet.

The next wave of disruption is likely to be even more profound, according to a study presented Saturday to the Online News Association annual meeting in Washington.

News organizations which have struggled in the past two decades as readers moved online and to mobile devices will soon need to adapt to artificial intelligence, augmented reality and automated journalism and find ways to connect beyond the smartphone, the report said.

"Voice interface" will be one of the big challenges for media organizations, said the report by futurist Amy Webb, a New York University Stern School of Business faculty member and Founder of the Future Today Institute, reports AFP.

The institute estimates that 50 percent of interactions that consumers have with computers will be using their voices by 2023.

Webb writes that most news organizations have done little experimentation with chat apps and voice skills on Amazon's Alexa and Google Home, the likes of which may be key parts of the future news ecosystem.

One big problem facing media organizations is that new technologies impacting the future of news such as AI are out of their control, and instead is in the hands of tech firms like Google, Amazon, Tencent, Baidu, IBM, Facebook, Apple and Microsoft, according to Webb.

"News organizations are customers, not significant contributors," the report said.

"We recommend cross-industry collaboration and experimentation on a grand scale, and we encourage leaders within journalism to organize quickly.

The study identified 75 technology trends likely to have an impact on journalism in the coming years, including drones, wearables, blockchain, 360-degree video, virtual reality and real-time fact-checking.

Webb's study said some changes in technology will start having an impact on the media in the very near future, within 24 to 36 months.