How does AI help in creating a superior reader experience?

Written by: Rashmi

Artificial intelligence has been in the use for past many decades. Yet it never fails to make news headlines because of how fast it evolves. AI has touched almost every industry in this age, including the publishing industry.

Daily news publishers, magazine publishers, and other types of publishers use AI to deliver a superior reader experience. The use of AI has become multi-faceted, and benefits come directly to readers.

Down below is a list of some ways how AI helps in creating a better reader experience:

Content Customization

Of all its benefits, content customization is the oldest and most precise one. Publishers use AI to first auto-tag their content and then deliver it to the reader according to past interactions.

For example, suppose a reader has visited the publisher app five times, and every time she has read news related to a particular political leader. In such a case, AI can detect that and then send push notifications and emails whenever there is new news about that leader. Publishers have found that this is one of the most economical and easiest ways to boost reader engagement.

Content On Demand

Earlier, chatbots were used only by product-based businesses to deliver fast customer service. But as AI advanced, it can now be used to deliver not only customized answers and solutions but also content.

Publishers can deploy reader chatbots on their websites and apps that ask readers about their reading preferences. Once the reader chooses a category, the bot further suggests sub-categories that the reader might be interested in. A good example of this is sports magazines' websites asking readers for their favourite sports and then delivering customized content.

Text Summarization

Summaries of long new pieces, articles, and books are trending because of two reasons: shorter attention span and changing reading habits. Readers read when they are commuting, when they are in meetings, or in other similar situations. Hence, they prefer to read short summaries of long texts.

AI and machine learning can now compress and summarise every type of text: from a 3,000-word article to a 30,000 words long book. All this can be done on a whim. Just a few years ago, many publishers established their brand exclusively by giving text summaries. Now, to retain their readers, traditional publishers have also started to deliver text summaries.

Content Translation

Content translations have embedded in the reading experience so well that readers don't even realize that there is AI and machine learning behind it. Earlier, the tools of translation were available only to giant search engines. But thanks to the advancement in AI and machine learning, every publisher now has the ability to translate their text into local languages.

AI has made the translation process so easy that a reader just has to click on a few buttons to translate the whole page into another language. Though manual editing is needed to furnish the translation, AI and machine learning still make the translation good enough that readers can comprehend translated pieces by themselves.

AI has become advanced enough to influence almost every touchpoint between a reader and a publisher. From content creation to content delivery, it can be deployed everywhere to create an overall better experience for the reader.