Marie Gilot says the explainer is dead. Because AI.

“Today, our readers query AI for all that stuff,” she writes. “They like the AI answers well enough and they don’t click on article links.”

Here’s the type of content losing to AI: explainers, how-tos, evergreens, aggregated news, resource lists, hours of operation for government offices, recipes.

Gilot is right, of course. But only partly.

It’s right that the commercial imperative to produce explainers — low cost, high traffic — is going to come under severe challenge at one end.

But that doesn’t mean the explainer is dead. It just means they need to have a reason to fight for their life beyond money.

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