USA Today Partners With Palantir to Gain “Actionable Intelligence” On Its Audiences

USA Today, formerly known as Gannett, has announced a partnership with AI surveillance firm Palantir to monetize and gather "actionable intelligence" on its audience, according to Nieman Lab. The largest newspaper publisher in the nation revealed the collaboration on its second quarter earnings call. CEO Mike Reed praised Palantir's AI-powered platform, stating it would enable USA Today to build a "common intelligence layer" from data collected on readers.

Reed elaborated that signals from each visit, session, and moment of attention could be connected to yield actionable intelligence, allowing for more effective user engagement and faster, greater monetization. The partnership's optics are contentious, given Palantir's ties to military targeting software and ICE, which secretly provided the agency a tool to map potential deportees using citizen's Medicaid and government data.

Palantir also supplies the Israeli military with an AI decision-making tool for battlefield analysis. USA Today Media's President Kristin Roberts revealed that the platform could automatically identify affiliate partnership opportunities, a task typically performed manually. This move follows a growing trend among media outlets seeking to adapt to an AI-dominated web environment, with Palantir partnering with Axel Springer, owner of Politico, Business Insider, and BILD, as well as Thomson Reuters, who faced controversy for supplying personal data to ICE.

USA Today has been increasingly incorporating AI into its operations and monetizing content, including generating article parts and running targeted gambling ads.