Tony Stubblebine took over Medium just as the hordes of AI invaders were wreaking havoc on the internet. He dispatched that threat while making Medium profitable for the first time. On Thursday, Stubblebine hinted to me that the company might have some AI tricks up its sleeve. Ahead of the company’s annual Medium Day, I spoke with Stubblebine about a wide range of topics, including how to pay creators in the age of AI.
Stubblebine recently backed the industry-driven Really Simple Licensing standard, which allows publishers to embed licensing terms on their websites, potentially requiring AI companies to compensate content creators for using and citing articles.
Stubblebine is a self-described AI hater, but he’s finally leveraging the technology to Medium’s benefit, both internally and, soon, externally. That makes perfect sense. I want different ways to consume Medium content, but I don’t want that to get in the way of compensating the writers on the platform. Somebody needs to figure out this balance. Perhaps it will be Stubblebine.