How ScalePost’s Ahmed Malik is building an AI survival strategy for media

May 2, 2025

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When chatbots summarize your reporting instead of sending audiences to your website, who really wins—and how can creators fight back?

Ahmed Malik, CEO of ScalePost, joins The Media Copilot to unpack the act of AI disintermediation. It’s a term that’s thrown around a lot, but it’s just a fancy word for when an AI chatbot like ChatGPT or Perplexity writes a summary based on a topic instead of directing a person to a website.

That's the basic thing AI services do, but if you think about it, even if the user doesn't have to read the website anymore, the chatbot does. The thing is, chatbots don't look at ads, they don't buy subscriptions, and they sometimes don't even respect paywalls.

Because of this simple idea, AI search is rewriting the economics of the web. But what if media companies could push back and get paid? That’s where Malik and ScalePost come in. As a bridge between publishers and AI platforms, ScalePost helps news organizations protect their work, monetize their data, and create a dialogue with the tech companies shaping the future.

Ahmed and I break down:

The hard truth about how AI is siphoning traffic—and what bot activity means for the future of metrics
Why evergreen content is especially vulnerable to AI disruption
What ScalePost is doing to make private deals and licensing discussions possible
How media companies are thinking beyond lawsuits to carve out new business models
What the Ziff Davis lawsuit against OpenAI signals for the industry at large

Ahmed also shares insight from ScalePost’s closed-door sessions with major publishers and AI platforms—giving us a rare peek into how the media business is negotiating its future in an AI-dominated landscape.

If you’re a journalist, media executive, or content creator wondering how to stay relevant—and solvent—in the age of generative AI, you’ll want to hear this one.

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This episode of The Media CoPilot was produced by Pete Pachal, Executive Producer Michele Musso, and with video/audio editing by the Musso Media team. Produced by Musso Media. © 2025 Musso Media. All rights reserved.

Music: Favorite by Alexander Nakarada, licensed under Creative Commons by Attribution 4.0 License