The Future Of Content In An AI World: Provenance & Trust In Information

When Emily Epstein shared her perspective on LinkedIn about how “people didn’t stop reading books when encyclopedias came out,” it sparked a conversation about the future of primary sources in an AI-driven world.

In this episode, Katie Morton, editor-in-chief of Search Engine Journal, and Emily Anne Epstein, former director of content at Sigma, dig into her post and unpack what AI really means for publishers, content creators, and marketers now that AI tools present shortcuts to knowledge.

Their discussion highlights the importance of provenance, the layers involved in online knowledge acquisition, and the need for more transparent editorial standards.

If you’re a content creator, this episode can help you gain insight into how to provide value as the competition for attention becomes a competition for trust.

Watch the video or read the full transcript below:

Katie Morton: Hello, everybody. I’m Katie Morton, editor-in-chief of Search Engine Journal, and today I’m sitting down with Emily Anne Epstein, former director of content at Sigma. Welcome, Emily.

Emily Ann Epstein: Thanks so much. I’m so excited to be here.

Katie: Me too. Thanks for chatting with me. So Emily wrote a really excellent post on LinkedIn that caught my attention. Emily, for our audience, would you mind summarizing that post for us?

Emily: So this should feel both shocking and non-shocking to everybody. But the idea is, people didn’t stop reading books when encyclopedias came out. And this is a response to the hysteria that’s going on with the way AI tools are functioning as summarizing devices for complicated and complex situations. And so the idea is, just because there’s a shortcut now to acquiring knowledge, it doesn’t mean we’re getting rid of the need for primary sources and original sources.

These two different types of knowledge acquisition exist together, and they layer on top of one another. You may start your book report with an encyclopedia or ChatGPT search, but what you find there doesn’t matter if you can’t back it up. You can’t just say in a book report, “I heard it in Encarta.” Where did the information come from? I think about the way this is going to transform search: There’s simply going to be layers now.

Maybe start your search with an AI tool, but you’ll need to finish somewhere else that organizes primary sources, provides deeper analysis, and even shows contradictions that go into creating knowledge.

Because a lot of what these synthesized summaries do is present a calm, “impartial” view of reality. But we all know that’s not true. All knowledge is biased in some way because it cannot be “all-containing.”

The Importance Of Provenance

Katie: I want to talk about something you mentioned in your LinkedIn post: provenance. What needs to happen, whether culturally, editorially, or socially, for “show me the source material” to become standard in AI-assisted search?

With Wikipedia or encyclopedias, ideally, people should still cite the original source, go deeper into the analysis, and be able to say, “Here’s where this information came from.” How do we get there so people aren’t just skimming surface-level summaries and taking them as gospel?

Emily: First, people need to use these tools, and there needs to be a reckoning with how reliable they are. Thinking about provenance means thinking about knowledge acquisition as triangulation. So, when I was a journalist, you have to balance hearsay, direct quotes, press releases, and social media.

You create your story from a variety of sources, so that way, you get something that’s in the middle and can explain multiple truths and realities. That comes from understanding that truth has never been linear, and reality is fracturing.

What AI does, even more advanced than that, is deliver personalized responses. People are prompting their models differently, so we’re all working from different sets of information and getting different answers. Once reality is fractured to that degree, knowing where something comes from – the provenance – becomes essential for context.

And triangulation won’t just be important for journalists; it’s going to be important for everyone because people make decisions based on the information that they receive.

If you get bad inputs, you’ll get bad outputs, make bad decisions, and that affects everything from your work to your housing. People will need to triangulate a better version of reality that is more accurate than what they’re getting from the first person or the first tool they asked.

Creators: Competing For Attention To Competing For Trust

Katie: So if AI becomes the top layer in how people access information – designed to hold attention within its own ecosystem – what does that mean for content creators and publishers? It feels like they’re creating a commodity that AI then repackages as its own.

How do you see that playing out for creators in terms of revenue and visibility?

Emily: Instead of competing for attention, creators and publishers will compete for trust. That means making editorial standards more transparent. They’re going to have to show the work that they’re doing. Because with most AI tools, you don’t see how they work, it’s a bit of a black box.

But if creators can serve as a “blockchain,” (a verifiable ledger of information sources) and they’re showing their sources and methods, that will be their value.

Think about photography. When it first came out, it was considered a science. People thought photos were pure fact. Then, darkroom techniques like dodging and burning or combining multiple exposures showed that photos could lie.

And when photography became an art form, people realized that the photographer’s role was to provide a filter. That’s where we are with AI. There are filters on every piece of information that we receive.

And those organizations that make their filter transparent are going to be more successful, and people will return to them because again, they’re getting better information. They know where it’s coming from, so they can make better decisions and live better lives.

AI Hallucinations & Deepfakes

Emily: It was a shocking moment in the history of photography. that people could lie with photographs. And that’s sort of where we are right now. Everybody is using AI, and we know there are hallucinations, but we have to understand that we cannot trust this tool, generally speaking, unless it shows its work.

Katie: And the risks are real. We’re already seeing AI voiceovers and video deepfakes mimicking creators often without their consent.

Inspiring People To Go Deeper

Katie: In your post, you ended with “people still doing the work of deciding what’s enough.” In an attention economy of speed and convenience, how do we help people go deeper?

Emily: The idea that people don’t want to go deeper flies in the face of Wikipedia holes. People start with summarized information, but then click a citation, keep going further, watch another show, keep digging.

People want more of what they want. If you give them a breadcrumb of fascinating information, they’ll want more or that. Knowledge acquisition has an emotional side. It gives you dopamine hits: “I found that, that’s for me.”

And as content marketers, we have to provide that value for people where they say, ‘Wow, I am smarter because of this information. I like this brand because this brand has invested in my intelligence and my betterment.’

And for content creators, that needs to be the gold star.

Wrapping Up

Katie: Right on. For those who want to follow your work, where can they find you?

Emily: I’m dialoging and writing my thoughts on AI out loud and in public on LinkedIn. Come join me, and let’s think out loud together.

Katie: Sounds great. And I’m always at searchenginejournal.com. Thank you so much, Emily, for taking the time today.

Emily: Thank you!

More Resources: 

• Building Trust In The AI Era: Content Marketing Ethics And Transparency
• AI Platform Founder Explains Why We Need To Focus On Human Behavior, Not LLMs
• Your Guide to Google E-A-T & SEO

Featured Image: Paulo Bobita/Search Engine Journal