Human judgement is journalism’s ‘decisive factor’ in the AI era, says FT chief Jon Slade
AI helped break the Epstein files and predict Bank of England interest rates, but it must serve journalism, not replace it
The CEO of the Financial Times has made a forceful case for human editorial judgement as the defining currency of journalism in the age of artificial intelligence, and announced a new licensing deal with Google to integrate FT journalism into AI products.
Speaking at the News in the Digital Age summit in London, co-hosted by FT Strategies and the Google News Initiative, Jon Slade argued that while AI is rapidly lowering the cost of content production, it is simultaneously raising the value of the people who decide what gets published and why.
“As AI-generated text becomes more abundant, human judgment becomes the differentiating factor in the news ecosystem,” Slade told delegates at WPP’s headquarters in London, where the event was being held.
It went straight to the core of a debate gripping every newsroom in the country: what happens to the value of journalism when machines can produce passable copy at near-zero cost?
The fundamentals haven’t changed
Slade’s answer is clear. The fundamentals of journalism, human reporting, human verification, and accountability to readers have survived every technological disruption from the printing press to the Internet. AI, he argued, is another tool in that lineage, not a replacement for the people who wield it.
“Trust in journalism is built on the confidence audiences place in the judgments of journalists, editors, technologists, and publishers,” he said. “AI cannot replace human responsibilities such as cultivating sources, choosing speed over silence, and earning trust.”
But this wasn’t a case against AI. Slade, who took over as FT CEO from John Ridding in July 2025 after more than 20 years at the company, was keen to stress his optimism about AI’s potential, provided the industry makes the right choices about how it is deployed.
The FT is already putting this into practice. Slade outlined a range of AI tools now embedded in the newsroom: headline testing, fact-checking, copy editing, archive analysis, and translation. These are not experimental side projects. They are operational tools that have already delivered tangible editorial results.
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From the Epstein files to predicting the Bank of England interest rates
Perhaps most striking was Slade’s description of how AI had enabled significant scoops, including reporting on the Epstein files, by rapidly analysing large sets of unstructured data that would have taken human researchers far longer to process.
He also pointed to the FT’s “signal from the noise” experiment using AI to interrogate the paper’s three-million-article archive to predict financial and economic indicators. As reported by Media Voices, which recently published a write-up, of Slade’s presentation from The Definitive AI Forum last year that this approach had enabled the FT to correctly predict Bank of England interest rate decisions in 10 out of 12 months.
This is where Slade’s vision for the FT gets interesting. He is not simply bolting AI onto existing editorial workflows. He is beginning to redefine what the FT’s output looks like, moving from a newspaper that publishes articles to what he told the AI Forum was “an intelligence source,” a phrase that, as Media Voices noted, puts the FT “in a different operating theatre.” At the summit, he argued AI can make journalism more continuous, explanatory, and personalised, helping readers understand not just what happened but why it matters.
Trust is an ecosystem property
Slade was equally honest about the risks. He acknowledged the well-documented problems of AI hallucinations, errors, and the spread of misinformation. But his most compelling argument was about the systemic nature of trust.
“Trust is not something a single newsroom can generate or guard; it is an ecosystem property,” he said. In a high-trust environment, AI amplifies quality journalism by surfacing context and widening access. In a low-trust environment, it accelerates the spread of misinformation and what Slade called “synthetic authority.”
It was a telling framing. The implication is that the fight over AI in journalism is not just about individual newsrooms making good decisions. It is about whether the broader information ecosystem rewards original reporting and human editorial judgement, or allows cheap, synthetic content to erode the foundations on which quality journalism depends.
The Google deal
Which brings us to the headline announcement. Slade confirmed a licensing deal between the FT and Google for AI pilot projects that will incorporate FT journalism. He framed the deal as an example of the kind of partnership the industry needs, one that recognises the value of original reporting and ensures fair remuneration for journalism used in AI products.
Google has been on a deal-making spree with publishers. As Press Gazette reported in December 2025, the company announced a pilot AI partnership programme with outlets including Der Spiegel, El País and The Washington Post. The FT already has a separate licensing arrangement with OpenAI, struck in April 2024. But the terms of these deals remain opaque, and critics have questioned whether they deliver genuine value to publishers.
Writing in Press Gazette, David Buttle, the FT’s former director of platform strategy, argued that Google’s partnership model risks replicating the shortcomings of its earlier News Showcase programme: flat fees and superficial arrangements that benefit the platform far more than the publishers. Buttle called on the industry to demand proper per-use licensing for content consumed through AI Overviews, AI Mode, and Gemini.
Slade appeared conscious of this tension. He called for partnerships that respect editorial independence, deliver fair value exchange, and maintain transparency. He argued that the system must “reward original, authentic human judgement and labour in journalism,” and that “human judgement will determine who gets rewarded in the AI world.”
The stakes are rising
The FT is better positioned than most to navigate this landscape. It has 1.5 million paying readers and revenues exceeding £540 million, with a subscription-led business model that already accounts for more than half its income. Slade’s commercial background – as Chief Commercial Officer he was responsible for three-quarters of the FT Group’s revenue – gives him a pragmatic lens on AI that balances editorial principle with business reality.
But his message at the summit was directed at the wider industry, not just the FT’s shareholders. AI does not spell the end of journalism, he argued. It raises the stakes. The newsrooms that invest in original reporting, maintain editorial accountability, and insist on human judgment at every critical decision point will be the ones that thrive. Those who treat AI as a shortcut to cheaper content will find they have nothing left worth paying for.
“AI must serve journalism, not the other way around,” Slade concluded. In a conference full of publishers, editors and tech companies trying to work out what comes next, it landed as both a warning and a challenge.
The News in the Digital Age summit was held on 11 February 2026 at WPP’s London headquarters, co-hosted by FT Strategies and the Google News Initiative.
