AI Is Reshaping Journalism and PR: Francesco Marconi on Surviving 'Machine Consumption'

Francesco Marconi, computational journalist and founder of AppliedXL who helped The Associated Press and The Wall Street Journal integrate AI into editorial workflows, discusses how AI systems now read and rank content before humans do, forcing communicators to structure information for machine consumption. Global surveys show a strong majority of news organizations have already experimented with generative AI tools for transcription, summarization, data handling, and drafting, fundamentally shifting how content is discovered and distributed. Marconi explains how the shift from traditional news cycles to AI-driven content discovery requires PR professionals to rethink media strategy and adapt to the new reality of journalism’s relationship with AI.