Lisbon, June 24, 2026 (Lusa) - Google’s head of partnerships for Southern Europe said in an interview with Lusa that, at this stage, the future of the media lies in adaptation and that media literacy is increasingly necessary in the fight against disinformation.

The future of the media, “at this stage, is one of readjustment, likely in terms of its organisation and its business model, and I hope they will very quickly find the best way to adopt this new technology into their operations and the creation of their offerings”, says Riccardo Terzi, Google’s head of partnerships for Southern Europe.

On the role of the tech company, he says he sees Google “as 100% of this landscape”.

Google has been, “in my opinion, of course, I’ve been working at Google for 13 years, but I think it’s a key player as an OTT, a technology platform that has fostered a strong sense of ecosystem, in my view”, he says.

Therefore, “everything we do with publishers and the media, and with advertisers and users gives real meaning to the way the whole ecosystem functions around our products and services,” he added.

“We are in the midst of a transition because we are witnessing, most likely, the adoption of a technology that is changing the way users search for information, and, as you can imagine, with Google Search, searching for information is our mission,” he said.

Firstly, “we are adapting to the new user journey, but I am 100% certain that we want to continue to take an ecosystem-based approach, and the media are part of that”.

He envisages “a future where AI will underpin the new value proposition and content creation”.

Google “needs to identify, in my view, three layers of next steps” for the tech company and for the media industry.

The first of these “is a path towards control and transparency”.

If, for example, “we also consider disinformation as an issue, then, as with all powerful technologies, the greater the impact of the technology, the more important it is that it is used in the right hands”, he pointed out.

Otherwise, “the damage it can cause is greater”, he says, emphasising the observation that “there is a dark side to AI in content generation, or generative AI, which is creating disinformation”, he said.

“I believe our contribution to this is to push for an industry standard, to push for labelling, to push for watermarking,” he stresses, noting that he does not see Google or the technology itself deciding what is true and what is not.

“But at least give the user the ability to detect what has been generated by AI and what hasn’t, and let the user choose,” he concluded.

Doing this alone “is impossible, so it has to be done in an ecosystem-wide way; it needs to be done with the media, probably also with advertisers, and with regulators and institutions”, which is “extremely important”.

On the other hand, “I can see Google likely redesigning the product experience, which will restore a balance in the transfer of value to the media industry and create a virtual experience similar to what Search has been for the past 20 years”.

In this transition, “I think we still need to improve the way in which the new version of Search, the new AI-powered version, will find more virtual ways to create value for the content we host and generate value for the content provider”.

Finally, “but no less importantly, I see a strong joint effort once again in media literacy, which will be necessary”, educating users and journalists alike to use AI for fact-checking.

Therefore, “literacy is even more necessary, in my opinion, to easily identify the source of what I am reading and how I am being informed”, he concluded.

ALU/ADB // ADB.

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