- The Economist experiments with agent-readable content for AI discovery.
- Publishers must adapt to AI agents answering user queries directly.
- Content is being restructured for AI agents and human readers.
The Economist is rethinking how its content gets discovered as AI-powered engines increasingly answer questions on behalf of users. The publisher is running early experiments with agent-readable versions of content that already sits outside its paywall, primarily marketing copy and B2B sales material, restructuring those pages so AI intermediaries can surface them cleanly.
The underlying logic is straightforward: discovery is shifting away from homepages and search bars toward AI agents acting on a reader’s behalf, and publishers that ignore this risk become invisible.
How The Economist Is Preparing For An AI-First Discovery World
Josh Muncke, VP of generative AI at The Economist Group, told Digiday the publisher is preparing for “a world with two versions of the web,” one built for rich human reading experiences, and another where “agents want clear structure, questions and answers, ideally text,” rather than carousels and feature imagery.
“There are some obvious places we must do that,” Muncke told Digiday. “We want our marketing content to be findable and discoverable and optimised for agents. And then we obviously need to think deeply about how and what portions of our editorial content should also appear in those kinds of surfaces.”
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In practice, that means building parallel versions of the same content: visually polished pages for human readers and stripped-back, Q&A-style formats for AI agents. With a growing share of B2B buyers now starting their research on tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, or Claude, The Economist’s sales and marketing pages need to register clearly in those results.
Being a subscription publisher, though, the team has to be careful about how much agent-readable content it gives away without weakening the case for a paid subscription. Muncke described all current work as “first, tentative experiments” using internal search and agent-readable formats as sandboxes to “work out the kinks, not just in accuracy and performance, but also how it sounds and the tone” before any wider rollout.
Why Agent Optimisation Alone Will Not Save Publishers
The Economist is not alone in thinking this way, but the broader industry is still in the early stages. Alessandro De Zanche, founder of media consultancy ADZ Strategies, framed agent optimisation as a baseline requirement rather than a competitive advantage. “Every quality publisher will build some version: the alternative is technical invisibility as search rebuilds around agents,” he said.
But De Zanche draws a sharp line between discoverability and sustainability. “Agents drive discovery, not the trust and engagement subscriptions and premium advertising depend on, and without it the agent layer’s economics collapse,” he said. “Everyone ends up building it. Trust coming from the audience is what ultimately separates the publishers who survive from those who disappear.”
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That tension sits at the heart of what The Economist is trying to work through: getting found by AI agents while making sure the thing readers are actually paying for, human editorial judgement, remains unchanged. Muncke is direct about where the line sits.
“Nobody wants to read an AI-written Economist,” he said, adding that AI’s role stays confined to research, workflow, and utility tools. The group has also committed to clear labelling so readers are not misled about where AI is being used.
