Salvation or undoing?

Robin Blinder

When we decided to survey our readers about their degree of AI adoption, I wasn’t surprised that the responses we received were split.”

Robin Blinder, editor-in-chief, Editor & Publisher

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has always seemed to me a two-sided coin. On one side are the efficiency and time savings that AI affords us for mundane tasks like transcription, summarizing and copy editing; on the other hand, are the concerns of lack of accuracy, hallucinations, copyright risks, potential impact on jobs and audience trust issues.

I was not the earliest adopter of AI technologies, and there has been an ongoing debate between me and my husband and business partner, Mike, about AI usage. When we decided to survey our readers about their degree of AI adoption, I wasn’t surprised that the responses we received were split. The 39 responses to our AI survey predominantly came from organizations that had 50 or fewer employees (84% of the total responses), with 38% of the total in the smallest range of 1-5 employees.

In the interest of full disclosure, I uploaded a spreadsheet of all responses into ChatGPT 5.0 and requested survey insights. The following takeaways were spot-on (edited and verified by moi):

1. Few organizations had formal AI policies in place; only 13% had formal, written guidelines.
2. Licensing agreements are rare, with only a small number of cited arrangements with Adobe or Google.
3. AI leadership is mostly absent. Some organizations noted that roles like publisher or editor were taking on the AI oversight; most did not have an AI lead.
4. Task forces, committees or working groups are also uncommon, with few having one or planning to create one.
5. AI tool usage is scattered but growing, and many (especially the smaller outlets) reported no tools in routine use.
6. Experimentation with content creation is cautious, with 56% of respondents reporting “no experimentation.”
7. Disclosure practices are inconsistent, with only a minority of organizations reporting that they have established disclosure standards. 38% said they “do not disclose AI usage,” and several noted that they avoid AI for content creation altogether to bypass disclosure requirements.
8. Formal AI training is rare, with only eight organizations reporting staff trained in AI by vendors, consultants or internal sessions.
9. The comfort level with AI is mixed, ranging from high enthusiasm to strong resistance. Not surprisingly, most smaller publishers are skeptical, cautious or reluctant to engage with AI beyond experimentation.
10. Future impact is perceived as disruptive but unclear, with the smallest organizations being more likely to report that AI will not affect their work or publications.

The biggest takeaway for me is that, when it comes to AI, we are very much an industry in transition — maybe even turmoil. Our survey was hardly scientific, nor did it have a large sample. However, the results mirrored what we’re hearing, seeing and reading anecdotally across our industry.

It was for this reason that we decided to devote so much of our October issue to different topics associated with AI. You’ll read articles and columns ranging from “high enthusiasm to strong resistance.” That is the evolution we are experiencing, and each person and organization needs to decide how they will respond.

AI is a momentous change for many of us. I believe one of my favorite authors, Barbara Kingsolver, in her collection of essays, “Small Wonder,” said it best: “The changes we dread most may contain our salvation.” Will AI contain our salvation or be our undoing?

Robin Blinder is E&P's editor-in-chief. She has been with E&P for six years. You’ll find her experimenting with several AI tools but often going back to paper and pencil. She can be reached at robin@editorandpublisher.com.