Search was the new social. Now it's in peril — the latest thing propping up media that new technology could destroy, Axios Media Trends expert Sara Fischer writes.

• Why it matters: People want answers — not lots of random links to dig through. The easy-to-use new chatbot ChatGPT — and other generative AI tools — soon will be able to supply answers and general info more elegantly and efficiently than links to old-fashioned news organizations.

What's happening: The past few years gave rise to a slew of successful digital media companies that focused on monetizing search traffic, often with low-quality content — famously, "What time does the Super Bowl start?"

• When something trended on Twitter or Google, publishers produced more of it in hopes of getting clicks from people searching for that topic — resulting in a sameness and predictability across the internet.
• Artificial intelligence is poised to wipe out content exactly like that — evergreen articles that provide recommendations or answer basic questions.

👀 Case in point: Just after 5 a.m. today, State of the Union day, the No. 1 most popular story on The Washington Post's site is: "What happens if TSA finds weed in my bag?"

• Then two stories about the earthquake in Turkey, a column about Tucker Carlson, and No. 5 is: "Winning Super Bowl party recipes for dips, wings, chili and more."

🔬 Zoom in: In an early example of what's coming, BuzzFeed last week said it will use OpenAI software, similar to the popular generative text site ChatGPT, to automatically write quizzes, beginning this month.

• "To be clear," the company's CEO, Jonah Peretti, said in a memo to staffers, "we see the breakthroughs in AI opening up a new era of creativity that will allow humans to harness creativity in new ways with endless opportunities and applications for good."

🔮 What's next: As search-based content becomes more commoditized, media brands will need to pivot toward serving specific audiences, rather than the masses.

• "Trying to compete on efficiency with robots never works," said Brian Morrissey, former president and editor-in-chief of Digiday, and author of a Substack newsletter on media, The Rebooting. "They always win."

The bottom line: Search rose as social died. Now it's being eaten by automation.

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Google yesterday announced several efforts to power search and other products using generative AI. Today, Microsoft will talk up its plans at an event with CEO Satya Nadella, Ina Fried writes in Axios Login.

• Why it matters: Google has long been working on such systems, but faces pressure to show progress amid all the attention on OpenAI's popular ChatGPT and similar projects.

Google laid out three AI-related projects in a blog post from CEO Sundar Pichai:

1. Bard, the conversational assistant based on Google's LaMDA large language model, is starting limited external testing.
2. The company is offering a preview of how it soon plans to integrate LaMDA into search results, including using the system to help offer a narrative response to queries that don't have one clear answer.
3. Google says it is developing APIs that will let others plug into its large language models, starting with LaMDA itself.

Microsoft — at the event today at its Redmond, Wash., headquarters — is expected to detail how ChatGPT and other tools will feature prominently inside products such as Bing and Office.

• OpenAI CEO Sam Altman tweeted a picture of himself with Nadella, suggesting AI will be the focus.

Read the Google blog post.

President Biden's State of the Union address at 9 ET tonight will include calls for insulin cost caps for privately insured patients, and a renewed bid to close the Medicaid coverage gap in Republican-controlled states that haven't accepted the Affordable Care Act's Medicaid expansion.

• Neither proposal has much of a chance. But the speech gives Biden an opportunity to draw contrasts with Republicans and highlight policy successes in the Inflation Reduction Act, says Larry Levitt, executive vice president of health policy at the Kaiser Family Foundation.

Biden will be reviving ideas that were rejected during negotiations over the IRA, the huge tax-and-climate package Biden signed in August, Axios senior health care editor Adriel Bettelheim writes.

• The White House frames this as part of ongoing efforts to lower health care costs for working families and to "give more families the peace of mind of affordable prescriptions and health care."

🥊 Reality check: Many Americans have to ration insulin because of the cost.

• The IRA limited monthly out-of-pocket insulin costs to $35 for Medicare beneficiaries starting this year but didn't extend the cap to the private market. Many Republicans view such a move as interfering with the market.

The speech is also expected to reference the surprise billing law — the object of continued legal challenges from providers over the method for deciding who picks up the tab in disputes over out-of-network care.

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A rescuer carries a Syrian toddler, Raghad Ismail, away from the rubble of a building yesterday following an earthquake in rebel-held Azaz, Syria.

• The death toll has passed 5,000 from a 7.8 magnitude earthquake and multiple aftershocks that struck eastern Turkey and neighboring Syria. Rescuers are still racing through the rubble today. Get the latest.

Residents rescue a girl from the rubble of a collapsed building in the town of Jandaris, in the countryside of Syria's northwestern city of Afrin, in the rebel-held part of Aleppo province.

Neighbors free an injured man from the rubble of a collapsed building in Jandaris, Syria. More on Jandaris.

Rescuers carry a girl from a collapsed building in Diyarbakir, Turkey.

Mandela Barnes, a Democrat who came close to winning a U.S. Senate seat in Wisconsin in November, today will launch a PAC to help candidates who are written off by institutional supporters, Axios' Alexi McCammond reports.

• Why it matters: Barnes — like Maryland's newly elected Gov. Wes Moore — faced skepticism from some corners of the Democratic Party about his electability. Both were African Americans competing for seats that had always been held by white lawmakers.

The Long Run PAC hopes to support women, people of color, LGBTQ, and working-class candidates across the country, Barnes told Axios — since they're likely to face negative assumptions because they don't "fit the mold" that Democrats think can win competitive statewide races.

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The National Enquirer's owners say they've struck an agreement with a joint venture called VVIP Ventures to acquire the U.S. and U.K. editions of the Enquirer, the National Examiner and the Globe in an all-cash transaction for an undisclosed amount.

• Why it matters: The sale of the Enquirer, a storied gossip rag that became engulfed in scandals in recent years, is the latest American tabloid giant to change hands as the era of print gossip fades, Axios Media Trends expert Sara Fischer writes.

What's happening: A small group of powerful voices has been replaced by hundreds of digital influencers and gossip sites that run the same rumors, often with even less accountability.

• While many print tabloids still run articles without bylines and using anonymous sources, it's still clear who owns most magazines. Online, even that small layer of accountability is often missing.

🖼️ The big picture: With few exceptions, most major U.S. print tabloids failed to adjust to the digital era. So their audiences have aged with them. Left with smaller business prospects, many titles have been sold for a fraction of their former values to buyers eager to salvage what's left of once-powerful brands.

• Some celebrity and gossip magazines have ceased printing but remain online.

🇬🇧 The one major exception has been the Daily Mail, a British tabloid whose U.S. version has become one of the most-trafficked American websites.

• The Daily Mail's successful online presence in the U.K. helped jumpstart its U.S. digital presence, at a time when other tabloids weren't investing much in their websites.

🍿 The big picture: Many of today's biggest internet gossip stories are peddled by anonymous people and accounts.

• The viral Instagram account DeuxMoi, which rose to popularity during the pandemic, made a name for itself by posting anonymous tips about everything from celebrity coffee orders to Hollywood affairs.

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