The rise of AI presents both opportunities and challenges for the news industry. According to Andy Budiman,CEO of the Indonesian media group KG Media,the most significant disruption may stem from Google’s expanding influence.

Budiman argues that Google’s dominance in search gives it considerable power over news publishers.He points to the impact of Google’s AI Overviews,which provide AI-generated summaries of search topics,as a prime example.

Following its initial launch in the US, Google introduced AI overviews in several other countries, including Indonesia, in August 2024.

budiman notes that one year later, KG Media has experienced a 37 percent decline in traffic to its news content as the introduction of AI Overviews. The drop has been even more pronounced for non-news content, with a 61 percent decrease.

Speaking at WAN-IFRA’s Jakarta ai Forum 2025, Budiman stated, “So I think it’s fair to say that AI is accelerating the disintermediation between publishers and audience.”

He added, “Perhaps the most urgent question is no longer ‘what if?’ but ‘what now?’ What do we need to do right now to retain any sort of relevance in the AI era?”

KG Media’s Strategic Pillars

KG Media is addressing these challenges with a four-pronged strategy, according to Budiman.

The first pillar involves a commitment to invest in journalism and journalists to distinguish their content from AI-generated alternatives.

Budiman emphasized, “In a world flooded with auto-generated, commoditised content, I think the worst mistake that we publishers can make is to further commoditise this market with our own low-quality copy-and-paste summaries, or to use AI to produce even more content.”

“We need to choose a different path and differentiate ourselves through the quality of our journalism and the capability of our journalists.”

As part of this effort, KG Media aims to increase the number of journalists certified by Indonesia’s Press Council’s standards.

The company is also prioritizing value over volume, implementing a content quality index where both AI and editors evaluate reporters’ work. These scores are then linked to performance reviews.

“High-quality content is essential. But the content must be paired with habit and engagement on the platform hosting that content,”

The second strategic step involves investing in building its own platform to foster direct audience engagement.

“High-quality content is essential. But the content must be paired with habit and engagement on the platform hosting that content,” Budiman said.

KG Media is expanding its content variety to strengthen its platform.

Budiman acknowledged that building a digital subscription platform for Kompas, Indonesia’s leading national newspaper, has been “quite humbling.”

While digital marketing can boost subscriber numbers, “it’s much harder to turn these digital subscribers into habitual users,” he said.

Budiman previously discussed the challenges of digital reader revenues in the Indonesian media market at WAN-IFRA’s Asian Media Leaders Summit.

Read more: How two leading Asian news publishers balance subscriptions and advertising

diversifying Revenue Streams

third, KG Media is focused on diversifying revenue streams beyond advertising to increase the share of non-advertising revenue.

Budiman noted, “Today, 60 percent of KG Media revenue is still based on the highly disruptible advertising model.”

He added that revenue sources like events, book publishing, research and data services, and IP monetization are more resilient and “actually much more aligned with our long-term news brand.”

the company’s final strategic goal related to AI involves negotiating with AI platforms to secure beneficial deals.

“If we truly believe our content has value, then we cannot allow the content to be scraped, crawled, and reused for nothing by AI players,” Budiman said.

“The more differentiated, the more original the content is, the stronger our position when we try to negotiate. High-quality journalism not onyl matters for human audience but also AI companies, as our content can be training material for their LLMs.”

Future AI Scenarios

Looking ahead, Budiman outlined potential scenarios for publishers as AI continues to evolve, depending on the extent of AI’s role in news production and distribution.

In the “AI Everything” scenario, AI platforms would control both news production and distribution, potentially diminishing the connection between audiences and specific news brands or journalists.

conversely,the “Publisher Stronghold” scenario would see publishers retain ownership of both their journalism and distribution,possibly serving a smaller,loyal audience.

Between these extremes are scenarios like “Ghost in the Machine,” where journalists produce news but AI platforms distribute it without proper attribution,and “synthetic Syndicate,” where audiences access publishers directly but the content is primarily AI-generated.

Budiman acknowledges that even with strong audience relationships, it’s unlikely most news outlets will directly engage the majority of audiences, as “most people probably prefer to find the data on social media or on AI platforms.”

“But at Kompass,we always remind ourselves that even in the peak of the golden days,our newspaper would reach only around 1 percent of the population in Indonesia. But that 1 percent is quite enough to develop a business that can sustain our journalism.”