Media must move to thought leadership in AI era, says FMT MD

Free Malaysia Today

However, industry leaders also call for news outlets to exercise caution in embracing AI due to concerns about intellectual property and brand safety.  Read More:  https://www.freemalaysiatoday.com/category/nation/2025/06/13/media-must-move-to-thought-leadership-in-ai-era-says-fmt-md  Laporan Lanjut:  https://www.freemalaysiatoday.com/category/bahasa/tempatan/2025/06/13/media-mesti-beralih-ke-arah-kepimpinan-pemikiran-dalam-era-ai  Free Malaysia Today is an independent, bi-lingual news portal with a focus on Malaysian current affairs.    Subscribe to our channel - http://bit.ly/2Qo08ry   ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Check us out at https://www.freemalaysiatoday.com Follow FMT on Facebook: https://bit.ly/49JJoo5 Follow FMT on Dailymotion: https://bit.ly/2WGITHM Follow FMT on X: https://bit.ly/48zARSW  Follow FMT on Instagram: https://bit.ly/48Cq76h Follow FMT on TikTok : https://bit.ly/3uKuQFp Follow FMT Berita on TikTok: https://bit.ly/48vpnQG  Follow FMT Telegram - https://bit.ly/42VyzMX Follow FMT LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/42YytEb Follow FMT Lifestyle on Instagram: https://bit.ly/42WrsUj Follow FMT on WhatsApp: https://bit.ly/49GMbxW  ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Download FMT News App: Google Play – http://bit.ly/2YSuV46 App Store – https://apple.co/2HNH7gZ Huawei AppGallery - https://bit.ly/2D2OpNP  #FMTNews #AzeemAbuBakar #ArtificialIntelligence #ChatGPT

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00:00And I believe that there will come a time where we will be very reliant on the AI assistance

00:08to a point where, you know, I think in the previous discussion, people no longer search.

00:15They will ask. It will come at the expense of traffic one day.

00:19And that is something which I think everybody will need to, you know, the industry as a whole, needs to address.

00:24With AI reshaping the media landscape, news outlets must evolve into thought leaders to stay relevant and avoid being left behind,

00:33says FMT Managing Director Azeem Abubakar.

00:36Speaking at the D Conference 2025, hosted by the Malaysian Digital Association,

00:41Azeem said the media can no longer ignore the radical shift in content consumption

00:46as users move from traditional searching to simply asking AI for information.

00:51I believe that we are heading into a game of, from traffic, you know, to thought leadership.

01:00So there's a lot of thought saying that, you know, publishers will get disrupted by AI, you know.

01:05Rather than we become the prey, let's go up the value chain, you know, and power AI instead.

01:12Azeem said AI platforms such as ChatGPT are increasingly dependent on original reporting,

01:18much of which comes from publishers.

01:19ChatGPT now has, you know, two, I would say, engines, right?

01:27One is the 4.0, which it does not give you citations unless you ask for it.

01:33And now you have, you know, O.3, where you can get citations.

01:39So I think one day, it could be a battle of who gets cited the most, right?

01:45To stay ahead, Azeem said FMT is rethinking how it presents information,

01:50focusing on formats that AI prefers, such as explainers and point-form content.

01:55We want to be able to, to some extent, contribute to what AI carries.

02:01And that actually works in our favour as well.

02:04And that's how we get narrative across.

02:06So I think at the end of the day, you know, people, there will be no more SEO, right?

02:11Maybe they will look at AIEO.

02:14And that is something which we want to research on and we are actively looking at.

02:18Media Prima Group Managing Director, Rafik Razali, raised concerns about intellectual property and brand safety,

02:25saying what keeps him up at night is seeing his team's work used to train large AI models without proper credit.

02:32Sometimes it's good to take a step back and to really understand what is it actually that we're doing, right?

02:38What are we trying to impact here?

02:40And I think, you know, all of us here have our responsibilities to ensure that, you know, socially we're doing the right thing.

02:47Nick Justin, Nick Arifin, Head of Group Corporate Communications at Karangkraf,

02:53emphasised the need to preserve trust and journalistic integrity, stressing that human oversight remains essential.

03:00Meanwhile, Diogo Andrade, the APEC Commercial Director at Teeds,

03:04warned of threats to monetisation and credibility posed by fake websites and auto-generated comment bots.

03:11With the rise of Gen.AI and content that doesn't come from a journalistic background,

03:17you see more and more the term, we were talking about this before, the term of premium media being diluted,

03:24and therefore everything is just media, and there seems to be no relevance or importance of having a journalist writing a content piece or value in it,

03:34and I think that's dangerous.

03:35Star Media Group's COO Lydia Wang summed up the new media equation as one of trust, structure, ethics and agency,

03:42urging audiences to stay sceptical and not trust content blindly.

03:47Natasha Bust, FMT.

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