To take the pulse of the news business, book yourself a ticket in April to Perugia, in central Italy, and settle down with a cappuccino on the Corso Vannucci. Every year this hilltop city hosts an international journalism festival, and the length of the queues stretching out of the town’s majestic palazzos tells you which subjects are on the minds of journalists.
I’m writing this after failing to make it into a packed panel-discussion on the subject of the moment: artificial intelligence, and how it is transforming the news business. This year in Perugia there are 13 sessions on Al, with queues reliably forming outside the Palazzo Graziani and Palazzo dei Priori. Attendees trying to get to the front of the line by flashing their press cards are out of luck: at this conference, nearly everyone has one.
The excitement and fear about Al are both warranted. I heard some great examples this morning of Al being used to automate routine tasks, and even to carry out completely new ones. Rappler, a Filipino news organisation, is using Al to turn text-based articles into comics, in four languages; Zamaneh Media, an Iranian outlet in exile in the Netherlands, has created an Al tool called Newsletter Hero to automate the production of emails. (Be assured that the one you are reading is 100% organically generated.)
The worries are justified, too. As
I explain in this week’s issue,
creative industries of all kinds, from newspapers to record companies and photo libraries, are objecting to the way that Al companies use their work to “train” their models. The tech firms say that such training is no different from a human learning from others’ copyrighted work. Rights-holders argue that the superhuman scale at which the models learn mean that superhuman standards should apply.
Some publishers are doing deals with the tech firms, while others are suing. (The Economist Group, our parent company, has not yet set out a public position.) It is the same story here in Perugia. Some journalists believe that the new technology will create new opportunities. Others are just making the most of the last days of Rome.
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Fast fact: 48% of media executives expect there to be “very little” money from AI licensing deals, according to a poll by the Reuters Institute at Oxford University.
Monday April 22nd Albertsons reports earnings. Its takeover by Kroger took a big setback in February when the Federal Trade Commission sued to block the merger of the two supermarket chains, arguing that it would lead to higher food prices for shoppers and harm workers’ bargaining power. The issue is heading to the courts.
Tuesday April 23rd
Investors will keenly await Tesla’s results for the first quarter. The carmaker’s share price has taken a battering this year (it is the second-worst performer in the S&P 500 index) amid declining deliveries, a lack of new models and competition from Chinese upstarts. It is laying off 10% of its workforce.
PepsiCo also reports. The food giant has reached a truce with Carrefour that will see the French supermarket chain sell Pepsi’s drinks and snacks again. The pair fell out earlier this year over what Carrefour described as Pepsi’s “unacceptable price increases”.
GE Aerospace presents its first quarterly results as a standalone company. Its earnings up to the end of last year had included performance figures for GE Vernova, the energy business, which has also just started trading as a separate company and which reports on April 25th. GE HealthCare, which was spun off from GE in early 2023, announces results on April 30th.
Wednesday April 24th
The annual general meeting of Goldman Sachs should provide fireworks. Glass Lewis, a proxy-advisory firm, has recommended that shareholders reject the 24% pay rise for David Solomon, the bank’s chief executive, because of a “significant disconnect between pay and performance”. Although net profit surged in the latest quarter, it had declined by 24% in 2023.
Meta’s share price is on a tear, up by 45% this year and recently reaching a new intraday high. The company presents its earnings for the first quarter. Earlier this year it declared its first-ever dividend and a $50bn share buy-back, which spurred a $197bn increase in its market value in a single day, a record for any company.
By contrast, Boeing’s share price has nosedived this year, amid a raft of concerns about the manufacturing process of its aircraft. The most notable incident was the loss of a panel on a 737 MAX 9 that left a gaping hole in the side of a plane, causing MAX 9 jets to be grounded. The company presents its first results since announcing that Dave Calhoun is to step down as chief executive.
Ford also reports. Sales of electric vehicles jumped by 86% in the first quarter, year by year, but it has still decided to push back the launch of a new EV until 2027 amid uncertainty in the market.
Thursday April 25th
Despite solid growth in revenues and profits, markets were sour after Alphabet and Microsoft last reported their quarterly results in January. Back then both companies said they would incur huge costs this year from investing in artificial intelligence. Investors will pore over their latest earnings for signs of whether the AI bets are paying off.
America’s Federal Communications Commission holds a vote to restore rules on net neutrality, the concept that internet-service providers should allow access to all content regardless of the source. Such rules came into force under Barack Obama, but were repealed by the Trump administration in 2017.
America publishes an estimate of GDP for the first quarter. The economy grew by 3.4% on an annualised basis in the fourth quarter of 2023. A surge in retail sales in February and March suggests that the first-quarter figure will also be buoyant.
Facing annual inflation of 69%,Turkey’s central bank meets to decide interest rates.
Friday April 26th
In March the Bank of Japan lifted interest rates for the first time since 2007. Investors are not expecting another rise just yet. But in a survey closely watched by the central bank, households have raised their expectations of further inflation.
The results season for big oil companies gets under way as Chevron, ExxonMobil and TotalEnergies all release their quarterly statements. Although net profits at all three companies declined in the last three months of 2023, year on year, they reported bumper annual earnings. Chevron may also provide an update on its spat with Exxon over who has the rights to an oil field off the coast of Guyana.
“Thick”, scoffed the headline on the Daily Mail website on April 9th, in response to the news that Scrabble has had an overhaul. In some parts of the world the word-play game has been relaunched with a double-sided board; one side now shows a new, simpler design that is meant to be less intimidating and more inclusive than the original.
