Exclusive: Time launches new AI agent

• "If the mass consumption of the internet is this agentic experience, then Time also must adapt to that moment," Time editor-in-chief Sam Jacobs tells Axios.
• "People spend hours and hours with agents, and hopefully this means that they will spend a lot more time with our journalism," Jacobs adds.

Zoom in: The AI agent, built in partnership with Scale AI, allows users to query and interact with Time's reporting.

• At launch, it's available on politics and entertainment articles and has a dedicated page. Time COO Mark Howard says they later will explore adding it to the homepage and the rest of the site.
• The AI agent pulls from Time's archive, including magazine issues and online articles. It's fully trained on Time content — about 750,000 assets from the archive — and does not pull from the open web or other sources.
• The agent can translate text and audio into 13 languages: English, French, Spanish, German, Italian, Portuguese, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Hindi, Hebrew, Arabic and Russian. Language accessibility is notable given how 40% of Time's digital readership is outside of the U.S., Jacobs says.

Zoom out: Time is investing in AI as both a tool and a topic of coverage.

• Last year, Time unveiled an AI chatbot for its annual Person of the Year announcement, also part of its ongoing partnership with Scale AI.
• Time has struck a slew of deals with AI companies, including OpenAI, ProRata.AI, Perplexity, Amazon and others.
• The publisher debuted its Time 100 list for AI in 2023.

What they're saying: "Time is miles ahead in using AI to enhance how people experience journalism. This is a blueprint for how publishers can use AI agents to create a more meaningful relationship between their audience and their content," Scale AI CEO Jason Droege tells Axios.

The big picture: Time joins a slew of publishing companies building AI interfaces to help readers engage further with their content.

• Forbes launched a generative AI search tool called Adelaide in 2023.
• The Financial Times began testing its "Ask FT" AI chatbot last year. The chatbot is trained on decades of its own articles.
• The Washington Post launched an "Ask The Post AI" feature last year that was available as a standalone search page. It's expanded its AI chatbot capabilities further in the months since.

Follow the money: Time is not monetizing the agent at launch and instead focusing on engagement and building a foundation for future sponsorships and an enterprise business.

• "I can't wait for those phone calls," Howard says of publishers inquiring about potentially licensing the agent.
• "We'd like to have an enterprise technology business, right? I mean, who wouldn't?" Jacobs says.

What's next: The Time AI agent is not currently personalized and lacks memory.

• Howard says Time plans to relaunch a logged-in experience — Time removed its digital paywall in 2023 — later this year that will allow memory storage.
• Time also plans to index images and videos and make them viewable, as long as they have the rights to them.