Vivek Shah, the CEO of Ziff Davis, in a recent interview on the Channels podcast with journalist Peter Kafka, has cautioned consumers to treat AI product recommendations with skepticism when making big purchases.
He said:
“In the end, sources matter. Where we get information matters. And so if you start to look into citations in LLM chatbots, you’re going to see that sources have gone from journalism sources to marketing sources.”
Shah added:
“I am amazed at how many citations are not [from] publishers but [from] brands. … For most [brands] being sourced in an AI answer is a good thing because it favors their product. But that may not be what’s in the best interest of the user.”
He urged users to check which sources are behind the AI’s answers, asking: “Would I have relied on those sources [before AI chatbots]?”
He noted that some AI platforms now de-emphasize or hide citations, making it harder to trace where the information came from.
Shah observed that while some chatbots still show publisher sources, others increasingly lean on marketing or brand sources that may push products rather than offer unbiased advice.
Even as he criticizes these practices, Shah told Kafka he remains “bullish” on the larger promise of AI.
“My issue is an intellectual property issue, but it’s not one where I say AI is not going to be transformative for our lives and for our businesses,” he said.
He also acknowledged that Ziff Davis might license trusted data to AI systems in the future, blending the roles of critic and participant.
Who is Vivek Shah?
Vivek Shah is the chief executive officer of Ziff Davis, a digital media and publishing company that owns tech and review sites including ZDNET.
He has become a vocal critic of how AI chatbots like ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Perplexity, and Anthropic’s Claude present product advice, especially when it comes to larger, high-stakes purchases.
In April, Ziff Davis under Shah filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, accusing it of improperly copying Ziff Davis’s copyrighted content into its models.
Although Shah contests the misuse of content by AI, he does not reject AI entirely.
Instead, he supports “smart implementations” of AI in business, especially where the data is reliable and transparent.
