Betting against the algorithm: Substack’s plan to make AI work in its favour
Substack’s first Australian hire is betting that AI will drive readers toward human writers — if the platform can keep AI out.
Four months into her role as Substack’s Australian head of partnerships, Annabelle Russell is making a bet that sounds almost perverse in the current media environment: people will pay more for content as AI makes it infinite.
The platform already has tens of thousands of publications across Australia and New Zealand and more than 100,000 paid subscriptions, all built without any local presence.
Russell isn’t here to introduce Substack to Australian audiences and writers. But growing it raises a problem she can’t fully resolve: subscriptions add up. At $10 a month each, a handful of Substacks becomes a meaningful annual expense fast, and readers have limits.
Push her on it and Russell points to a cultural shift.
As AI floods the information environment, she argues, readers are becoming more deliberate about what they pay for.
