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Check out the Tow Center for Digital Journalism’s new AI Deals and Disputes Tracker here.
Last Wednesday, two lawsuits were filed against OpenAI and Microsoft, adding to a long string of copyright cases against AI companies. One suit, filed by nine regional publishers in the United States owned or managed by MediaNews Group, alleges that, by “designing, training, and operating AI models that pilfer, copy, memorize, and replicate” their work, OpenAI and Microsoft deprive these news sites of traffic, reduce advertising and subscription revenue, and threaten the overall value of their businesses. The publishers seek more than ten billion dollars in damages, which the suit describes as “a pittance” compared with how much money AI companies make off of copyrighted content.
The second lawsuit, filed by the US News & World Report—known for publishing education and financial rankings—alleges that the business has been harmed by “OpenAI’s hijacking of content” from its sites.
This week, proceedings for both cases were combined with other copyright infringement lawsuits against OpenAI and Microsoft filed in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, of which there are many: by the New York Times, The Intercept, the Center for Investigative Reporting, Ziff Davis, Raw Story and Alternet, eight other publishers connected to MediaNews Group, and a number of individual authors, including Ta-Nehisi Coates and Sarah Silverman. (OpenAI has also been sued internationally by Folha de S.Paulo, the Brazilian newspaper; a broad coalition of Canadian news organizations; an industry group representing nearly all Danish media outlets; and several major Indian publishers.)
OpenAI and Microsoft are not the only companies being sued. Perplexity has been sued for copyright infringement by Dow Jones and the New York Post, as well as Japanese publishers: Yomiuri Shimbun, Nikkei, and Asahi Shimbun. A few weeks ago, a judge rejected a motion by Cohere, a Canadian AI startup, to dismiss a lawsuit filed by fourteen news and magazine publishers against the company last year. In September, Penske Media Corporation, which owns titles like Rolling Stone, Billboard, and Variety, took a different route, filing an antitrust lawsuit against Google.
Not all media organizations have taken legal action to demand compensation for the use of their content by AI companies. Nearly twenty media groups have signed licensing arrangements with OpenAI; the most recent was with the Washington Post, in April. Perplexity, which began with a revenue-sharing model through its Partner Publishers Program, has since diversified its approach, signing a licensing agreement with Gannett (now USA Today Co.) and a multiyear “content partnership” with Le Monde. In October, it also established a 42.5-million-dollar pool to be distributed to publishers as part of a new subscription model called Comet Plus. Perplexity says participating outlets will be compensated based on how often their content is accessed by people using Comet, appears in AI search results in the browser, or is used by Comet’s AI agent to complete tasks.
AI companies appear to be testing out different approaches to compensation. Last month, the Associated Press, USA Today Co., and People Inc. announced that they will be launch partners in Microsoft’s forthcoming Publisher Content Marketplace. According to Axios, Microsoft plans to pilot a two-sided marketplace that compensates publishers when their content is used by AI products, with Copilot serving as the marketplace’s first AI buyer. Smaller startups like ProRata.ai, TollBit, and Snowflake have also been building content marketplaces. And according to the Wall Street Journal, Meta—whose only existing licensing deal is with Reuters—has recently approached publishers including Axel Springer, Fox Corp., and News Corp about licensing their articles for use in its AI tools.
How, whether, and how much publishers will be compensated are some of the major existential questions facing the news industry in the “AI era.” Today, the Tow Center for Digital Journalism is releasing a tracker that monitors developments between news publishers and AI companies—including lawsuits, deals, and grants—based on publicly available information.
There is no consensus on how best to ensure that journalists are compensated and credited for the use of their content by AI companies. Sometimes, a publisher that sues one AI company will enter an agreement with another—as happened with the Times, which sued OpenAI and entered a multiyear licensing agreement with Amazon that is reportedly worth between twenty million and twenty-five million dollars annually.
As Kari McMahon argued in A Media Operator earlier this year, the “knee-jerk” reactions of publishers to strike content deals with AI companies could make it harder to come up with industry-wide standards for licensing.
One other emerging strategy is Really Simple Licensing, which launched in September and aims to create a clearinghouse where publishers can set payment terms and attribution requirements. Last week, Digiday reported that Arena Group, BuzzFeed, USA Today Co., and Vox Media have joined its growing list of publishers.
The vast majority of news publishers do not have the means to enter either formal deals or lawsuits, but the effects of the actions being taken by those that do are likely to trickle down and affect everyone’s ability to be compensated for use of their work.
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