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A report from Enders Analysis has argued that generative artificial intelligence “will not alter the fundamental commercial reality for the news” as the shift online did previously.

The research firm cautioned publishers to be “realistic” about the productivity and revenue gains possible from AI, but added that ignoring AI would be “a mistake”.

The report found there have been some valuable uses for AI in the newsroom — but argued that there may not be an “immediate, killer news use case to raise revenues”.

AI can also help to create “more sophisticated metadata for archival material”, they wrote, in turn making it easier for journalists and readers to access a publisher’s back catalogue. This could have revenue implications for local publishers in particular, they said, “where some historical material has barely been digitised”.

A $1.1 billion rights acquisition fund establishes Grup Mediapro once more as a player on the sports brokering scene, though not on the scale of European leader Sky, which invested $3.2 billion in 2024/25 nor even Canal+, whose 2024/25 outlay is $628 million, according to Enders Analysis

“Increased regulatory pressure could be behind this new publisher push,” said Niamh Burns, senior research analyst in tech and media at Enders Analysis. “From TikTok’s perspective, it helps to have fact-checked, informative news publisher content on TikTok to counter any narrative around disinformation or platform bias.”

But as she pointed out, publishers don’t make money on TikTok, at least not yet. “Until this improves it’ll remain an arms-length relationship for a lot of publishers,” Burns added. “TikTok isn’t a referral channel, and publishers need to balance getting their brand in front of young people with the risk of getting lost in the content mix.”

This was mainly driven by rising interest costs, which account for more than 100pc of alt-nets’ turnover on average, according to figures from Enders Analysis.

Enders said the tie-up could help CityFibre win market share from BT and Virgin Media O2 but warned there were limited wholesale prospects for smaller alt-nets.

The amount of money raised so far this year is barely enough to cover losses and interest charges – let alone to fund continued network expansion, Enders said.

“There is the question about how much publishers are using these tools themselves,” said Niamh Burns, senior research analyst at Enders Analysis. “I think the amount of deployment is low, there is a lot of experimenting out there, but I could see a world where publishers will use some of these tools a lot. However, publishers must be realistic about the scale of efficiencies and revenue generation opportunities.”

Burns said that so far the willingness of publishers to use AI tools that directly impact or create editorial content related to how commercially pressured the media environment was for that operator.

“I do think that those media companies that are most commercially at risk in the near term are also at risk of overdoing it,” said Burns.

“A lot of that is to do with commercial models. If you rely on advertising from lots of traffic on social platforms and all you need is scale, not necessarily quality, then AI could be seen to really help.