AI, discovery and media’s next phase

Much AI hype centers on the idea that it will do tedious tasks, freeing us for higher-level work. Yet clear human-to-human communication remains crucial. AI can't think for us, and people still expect us to think.”

Chad Davis, chief innovation officer, Nebraska Public Media

Last month, I spent 10 days at the Game Developers Conference (GDC) in San Francisco, then South by Southwest (SXSW) in Austin. Here are reflections from the innovators at those conferences.

The forge, not the fire

As AI hype fades and utility emerges, generative AI’s clear advantage for creatives is the ability to show, not just tell. Call it “demos over memos” or “demos over docs.” Whether for quick ideation, iteration or a nearly finished prototype, AI lets us blend craft and concept earlier in the process to communicate our vision for a product, story or experience.

Intent remains the essential creative element that can't be outsourced to AI. While AI can rapidly reach an average result — a useful advantage — it doesn’t replace the need to think through creative challenges. Good ideas, stories and products are inherently difficult and demand human intent. As Irena Pereira, founder and CEO of Infinite Realms/Unleashed Games, said at GDC, “AI is the forge, not the fire.”

For public media and local news creators, that forge means the scope of creative intent is broader than ever. It also means creation is no longer limited by the speed of thought. At both conferences, AI tools were called a “partner,” “participant” or “collaborator” with whom modern knowledge workers “share” — replacing what Jon Gibson and Tara Phillips of Keywords Studios call a “prompt and pray” approach with "steer and iterate" interactions. The metaphor of orchestration also appeared often, linked to the idea that knowledge workers and creators are always tuning the system as they move from “doing to deciding.”

Again, this is a good thing. But there is a creative responsibility that comes with the opportunities afforded to us by AI: Creators must lean into the friction of craft.

Grind and rise

Orson Welles once said, “The enemy of art is the absence of limitations.” And especially at GDC, there was a lot of consideration of friction as a necessary, constructive component of craft.

Concepts plus craft can be multiplied by constraint, and that equation can yield something that meets our standards in media. Workflows should be crucibles. But AI tools offer creators a tempting lack of restraint, and that lack of restraint is one of the key ingredients of slop.

Much AI hype centers on the idea that it will do tedious tasks, freeing us for higher-level work. Yet clear human-to-human communication remains crucial. AI can't think for us, and people still expect us to think.

Monthly, a new AI model or feature emerges. As Aparna Chennapragada said at SXSW, “Today's magic is tomorrow's commodity.” Remember: Public media and journalism organizations in general measure success differently from AI. AI companies sell novelty, but in media, novelty is secondary to our core values.

Trust anchors our values. Mark Cuban offered a concise formula during a journalism session: “Trust equals process transparency divided by motive clarity.” As with intent, process lifts us above generative “slop.” Process makes us human, and it’s the process loop that matters most. As information costs drop, public media and trusted news organizations add value through creative workflows.

That’s the friction against which we need to optimize. Given the tools we have access to here in mid-2026, the best way to do this is to identify pain points in your workflow and consider how AI can help smooth them out and reduce constraining frictions.

Creatives, you’ll know you’ve found the right balance when the process leading to the pain points becomes “fun” again.

Public media and newsroom leaders, you need to be setting your creation teams up for success. Help your teams set principles for AI use; don’t hit them with mandates. When generation is cheap (token costs fell 70x from early 2024 to early 2026), standards matter more. They are the ultimate friction against which we hone our value.

Citation mediation

As we embrace creative friction, destructive friction threatens us — namely, the friction audiences face in finding our content.

It’s well known that in digital life, discovery is key — from finding mobile photos to choosing what content to consume or assessing election choices. Increasingly, AI intermediates this process. I frequently hear Gen Z and Gen Alpha mention “ChatGPTing” information.

To counter destructive friction, media must prioritize a discovery strategy focused on AI and SEO (and AEO or GEO). The consensus from Austin and San Francisco: AI is still in its listicle phase — an extension of media built for clicks. Structure your information to increase your chances of being cited. Right now, the goal is citation.

We need to accept that it isn’t aligned with storytelling for an audience. I’m not suggesting that we always subjugate storytelling to the bots; after all,  stories are largely why any of us know what we know. But at this point, AI isn’t prioritizing unwinding your carefully knitted narrative to answer a prompted question. We need to accept that there are times when we need to choose bot-friendly, choose human-friendly, or structure the story for both (e.g., by adding bulleted summaries of key points at the top of each story). The clock is ticking. AI search is projected to overtake traditional “10 blue link” Google search by 2028.

Gaming is (still) the future

The final takeaway from my marathon of professional development is that gaming is the future. I see this happening on two levels. First for Gen Z and Gen Alpha, gaming is (and will remain) a public square.

If you want to anticipate what’s next in journalism and media, watch gaming’s economic and technological trends — especially regarding AI.

The games industry faces acute AI challenges. It values craft and grapples with large-scale discovery. What it learns now, we’ll face soon. Watch that space.

Chad Davis is the chief innovation officer at Nebraska Public Media, where he founded the Public Media Futures Lab and co-founded the Public Media Innovators Peer Learning Community. Prior to that, he was the inaugural head of Nebraska Public Media Labs and led teams responsible for publishing experiments with AI, video games, virtual reality, 360-video and podcasting. He speaks regularly about the intersection of public media and emerging media and publishes a semi-regular newsletter under the Public Media Innovators banner.