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The current Far Out drafts pile boasts an interview with a band about their forthcoming tour, an opinion piece on a film that hasn’t even been released yet, and an exclusive newser. AI might be nifty, but it can’t produce any of those on its own.

But what it can do is scalp and reproduce those articles in a handy overview shortly after they’re published. It can do that until the cows come home. While that might deal an unfair hand to journalists, unfortunately, it is actually a vital function of the online world that has been happening long before tech workers with horn-rimmed glasses in smart-casual wear started appearing on the news claiming an AI-mageddon was imminent.

Imagine, for instance, a journalist wants to establish exactly what Donald Trump said about Vladimir Putin in a 2002 interview. A machine-readable archive could preserve and retrieve the original, unedited interview, allowing today's journalist to compare Trump's words then with what he says about Putin now. 

Without that archive, and the ability for machines to scrape, index and preserve vast quantities of material, much of that historical record becomes harder to find, verify and use. That is why simply putting everything behind new copyright restrictions isn't necessarily the answer.