We're being told that AI dominance is inevitable. That content professionals need to adapt or get left behind. That the web as we knew it is already over. But what if "inevitable" is just really good marketing?
I've been publishing on the free web for half my life. Over the last year or two, I've watched website traffic drop while impressions climb. I've seen my work "and years of institutional knowledge from my charity clients" feed LLMs without attribution. And I've watched the narrative around AI shift from 'interesting tool' to 'existential threat you must embrace immediately.'
This talk explores what we're actually losing as AI reshapes content discovery and the web itself. I'll share what I've learned about disintermediation, the erosion of intellectual property, and why enshittification might be getting worse, not better.
But more importantly, we'll look at what content strategists and designers can do right now " the practical choices that matter when you're trying to build something that lasts.
