Episode 15: The Future of News, AI & Creator Trust

This episode explores one of the biggest tensions shaping the digital economy right now, the growing collision between platforms, governments, media companies and the audiences caught in the middle.

For years, the internet operated on a relatively simple exchange. Platforms distributed attention, publishers controlled information and audiences largely trusted the systems delivering both.

That balance is starting to fracture.

As platforms become entertainment ecosystems, AI accelerates content creation and governments attempt to regain control through regulation, the lines between media, technology and influence are becoming increasingly blurred.

In this episode of Influencing Outcomes, Nathan Powell, Ben Gunn and Eliza Lewis unpack the growing shifts reshaping media, creator marketing and digital trust, and what they reveal about where the industry is heading next.

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TikTok World, Creator Entertainment and the Media Shift

The conversation begins with reflections from TikTok World in New York and the IAB Video Summit, where platform leaders, brands and marketers gathered to discuss the future of digital video and creator led entertainment.

What became increasingly clear across both events is that creator marketing is no longer emerging behaviour. It is becoming infrastructure.

Audience attention has fundamentally shifted away from traditional media environments and towards personalities, creators and algorithmically driven entertainment ecosystems. Consumers are no longer engaging with media in the same linear way they once did, and platforms are continuing to evolve around that behaviour.

At the same time, many brands are still relatively early in understanding how creator marketing actually functions within the broader media mix.

While investment into the space continues to grow, there remains a disconnect between how audiences consume content and how many businesses still structure media, measurement and campaign planning internally.

The rise of creator led entertainment is also reshaping expectations around content itself. Audiences increasingly expect media to feel participatory, personalised and native to platform culture rather than polished through traditional advertising frameworks.

For marketers, this creates a growing need to rethink not just channels, but the systems and assumptions underpinning how attention is earned in the first place.

The News Media Bargaining Code and Platform Power

The episode then shifts towards one of the most debated topics currently facing the Australian media landscape, the proposed social media levy and the ongoing evolution of the News Media Bargaining Code.

What begins as a conversation around journalism quickly expands into something much broader. Questions around platform responsibility are now deeply connected to taxation, distribution, algorithmic control and the economics of attention itself.

At the centre of the debate is a growing tension between governments attempting to preserve traditional media systems and platforms that increasingly operate outside those structures.

While policies like the bargaining code were originally introduced to support journalism sustainability, the conversation raises an important question around whether these approaches are solving the underlying issue or simply delaying a larger structural shift already underway.

Audience behaviour has already moved. News consumption is becoming increasingly fragmented, decentralised and platform native, particularly among younger demographics who no longer rely on traditional publishers as their primary source of information.

This creates a difficult balancing act for regulators. Protecting journalism remains important, but applying legacy frameworks to rapidly evolving digital ecosystems is becoming increasingly complex.

For platforms, the stakes are equally significant. As governments attempt to exert greater control over content distribution and monetisation, questions around platform accountability and influence continue to intensify.

The result is a media environment where the systems designed to govern information are struggling to evolve at the same pace as the technologies reshaping it.

AI, Synthetic Content and the “Dead Creator Theory”

The discussion then turns to AI and Nathan’s “Dead Creator Theory” presentation delivered at the AIMCO Summit.

The theory explores a growing shift already beginning to emerge across online culture, the increasing difficulty audiences face in determining what is real, authentic or even human online.

As generative AI tools continue to improve, synthetic content is becoming faster, cheaper and easier to produce at scale. What was once distinguishable as artificial is rapidly blending into mainstream content environments.

This has significant implications for trust.

Historically, creator marketing has performed strongly because of its perceived authenticity. Audiences built connections with creators through familiarity, consistency and relatability. However, as AI generated personas, automated content and synthetic engagement continue to increase, those signals become harder to interpret.

The conversation does not position AI itself as the core problem, but rather as an accelerator of broader changes already happening across the internet.

The volume of content continues to rise while the effort required to produce it continues to fall. At the same time, algorithms remain incentivised to prioritise engagement at scale, regardless of whether that engagement is driven by humans or automated systems.

As this continues, trust increasingly becomes the differentiator.

Content rooted in genuine perspective, sustained audience connection and consistent identity may become more valuable in an ecosystem flooded with infinite content generation.

For creators and brands alike, authenticity is no longer just a positioning tool. It is becoming infrastructure for long term relevance.

Platforms, Policy and the Fight for Trust

Across all three discussions, a clear pattern emerges. The systems built to govern media, advertising and information are evolving far slower than the platforms and technologies reshaping audience behaviour in real time.

Creator marketing is growing faster than traditional media models can adapt. Governments are attempting to regulate ecosystems they only partially control. AI is reshaping the nature of content itself while audiences become increasingly uncertain about what deserves their trust.

For brands, creators and platforms, this creates both risk and opportunity.

Understanding how platform behaviour, regulation, audience trust and technology intersect is becoming increasingly important for anyone looking to build meaningful influence within the next era of digital media.

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