Analysis: OpenAI has taken on a huge amount of debt to make its AI future a potential reality. An advertising model is needed to drive increased revenue, but are advertisers interested?

The Observer’s new commercial chief speaks about why he’s prioritising a “luxury” experience for clients, and the effort to diversify the title’s fledgling product offering.

Podcast: The co-founders and chairs of the Alliance of Media Independents discuss their plans for expansion and why indies might be the beneficiaries of a consolidating agency landscape.

ITV business development director Jason Spencer says the broadcaster has made greater use of AI ads in sales pitches and the creative process, rather than just in the final result.

Welcome to The Brief for Friday 15th January. 

In response to widespread backlash against xAI’s chatbot Grok creating and disseminating nude and lewd images of people on X, the platform has said it has “implemented technological measures” aimed at preventing users from utilising Grok to “[edit] images of real people in revealing clothing such as bikinis”. Whether the changes are effective is another matter.

Nine in 10 British adults now say journalism is “important to society today” — up 20% from the year before — but publishing leaders have expressed concern over declining referral traffic and political attacks.

Marketing leaders Richard Brooke (Unilever), Simon Patilinet (PepsiCo), and Alison Keith (ex-Kraft Heinz) spoke to Justin Lebbon at the Future of TV Advertising Global about how they consider TV in an era of increased spend with platforms.

Allwyn’s global media director will leave the multi-national lottery operator in March for new role.

At this year’s CES, WPP, Omnicom, Stagwell, Reddit, Disney, Havas, NBCUniversal and Yahoo unveiled new AI features aimed at making marketing easier and more efficient.