Artificial intelligence (AI) is no longer a technology of the future – it's a daily reality for many publishers of all sizes. AI now powers an increasing number of tools that journalists use to gather, produce and distribute content, including Echobox, the social media management platform we built specifically for publishers. With more than 700 publisher clients globally, including 25% of the world's newspapers of record, we have access to a large and unique dataset that describes how AI can change the social media game for publishers. We recently completed an analysis of how these publishers use automation technology to manage their social media. Below are three insights into how they're benefitting from AI, as well as best practices for increasing your own social media traffic.

Fake news is already a massive problem worldwide and with continuing improvements in content generation tools powered by artificial intelligence we are not far from the era of neural fake news i.e., fake news generated by AI. That would make it an even more formidable challenge for publishers. Currently, bots are being used to spread fake news, advanced AI models that are capable of consistently generating convincing pieces of disinformation are not yet available. Researchers are already working to counter such a scenario. An artificial intelligence model developed by researchers from the University of Washington and Allen Institute for AI (AI2) can spot fake news with 92% accuracy, per the team that developed the model. This is a substantial improvement compared to other similar detectors, the best of which have an accuracy rate of 73%.

"There is no doubt that AI will become the essential key to success for the publishing industry," says Colin Lovrinovic, MD of Gould Finch a management consultancy. Gould Finch and Frankfurter Buchmesse (international publishing industry's biggest trade fair) have collaborated on a recently published whitepaper, "The future impact of artificial intelligence on the publishing industry." It is the result of a 6-month international survey of 233 participants from 17 countries, and includes inputs of CEOs and editors from the publishing industry. The paper outlines challenges publishers face while considering AI implementation in their organizations. And presents suggestions on where they should concentrate efforts and attention to realize the most benefits.

There was a time artificial intelligence may have conjured up visions of robots and sci-fi humanoids, however it is now increasingly being used by businesses across multiple industries and the publishing world is no different. For publishers, AI has the potential to deliver more relevant and targeted content for readers and ultimately drive subscriptions and renewals. It's important to recognise that AI technology is still in its infancy, especially in the publishing industry, and therefore some brands are cautious and naturally skeptical. According to Resulticks research, 47% of all marketers still consider AI to be "overhyped". For those who are trying to move with the times, when it comes to technically implementing AI, 69% rate their vendor's performance as "poor". A further 42% of marketers either have no current plans to implement the technology, or have already aborted their efforts.