June 2025 update
Jinfo Blog

4th June 2025

By Stephen Phillips

Abstract

• AI, News and current awareness - including free tools, Factiva Smart Summary, and Ask FT
• Are you upskilling for AI?
• Are you managing expert networks or data marketplaces?

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Firstly, I just had to share with you how pleased and proud we were to receive the following feedback after our latest Community session, on contract negotiation:

"WOW!!! Was this ever useful.

Getting an unfiltered view of how vendors think about their customers was amazing. This session could easily have been twice as long and still left me wanting more. These types of practical sessions about vendor management are why I subscribe."

If your organisation doesn't have a Jinfo Subscription yet, read about the benefits.

AI, news and current awareness - a roundup

We recently met a colleague who said that they could see themselves moving the bulk of their news searches to a free AI tool in the not too distant future! Now that would be an interesting negotiation!

Free AI products like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Claude continue to forge ahead with new models and increasingly sophisticated capabilities.

Jinfo's Anja Thygesen investigates the rapidly expanding capabilities of these tools and how that might meet your news and current awareness needs:

• Report: "Can you rely on open-source AI for news? A review of Perplexity and ChatGPT"

So, there is clearly a use-case for AI in the provision of news and current awareness services, and the established vendors are grappling with a host of challenges to adopt AI for their products. Content rights/licensing, "hallucinations" and costs are all weighing heavily on their efforts.

Anja offers some interesting insights into the AI capabilities offered by Dow Jones with their Factiva Smart Summary enhancement:

• Report: "Product review of Factiva Smart Summary"

... which provides an interesting comparison to the Financial Times' Ask FT.

Having already published our product review of Ask FT, Anja and I discuss more of the specific features of the product in this new Webinar:

• Webinar: "News and AI - a look at Ask FT"

On our free-to-read blog, we summarise some of the findings of our research into the potential of AI in the provision of news and current awareness:

• Blog: "AI and news content: promises, pitfalls, and what comes next"
  
  

Are you upskilling for AI?

Despite the ability of AI to perform complex tasks, the discussion at our April Community session focused on the need to train staff to use the technology.

Our report includes more insights into how prompting and critical evaluation skills, good governance, and simply asking the right questions enable you and your colleagues to get more value from AI:

• Report: "Upskilling for AI: how information managers are building confidence and capability"
  
  

Are you managing these emerging sources of information?

We were very interested to learn from a colleague that their organisation was spending over $20m a year on expert network vendors.  Whilst another colleague shared the challenges they face managing this category of vendor.

Spending on these vendors is growing at 16% (compound annual growth rate since 2016), with no signs of slowing as these vendors continue to extend their reach.

We will discuss this segment in this month's Jinfo Community session. We'll look at the case for information managers to step up to manage these vendors with Max Friberg, CEO of Inex-One:

• Community “Expert networks - an opportunity for information managers” (26th June 2025)

A number of colleagues are telling us about their experiences working with the relatively new vendors for data marketplaces. They have the potential to shift the content buying process from "just in case" to "just in time."

We followed-up our article on managing data marketplaces with a free to read blog:

• Blog: "Why information management skills are critical for managing data marketplaces.

All our resources are available with an annual Jinfo Subscription. Whether you have one yet or not, why not book a walk-through with me, to get the most value?

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