Guardian joins media coalition to protect original journalism from unpaid use by AI | Newspapers & magazines
A coalition of UK media companies, including the Guardian, has called on industry peers to support global frameworks that ensure AI firms are paid for the journalism they use.
News providers are calling on leaders in broadcasting, publishing, media and news to join their newly formed group in a bid to protect “original journalism” and ensure “the long-term sustainability of our industry”.
The coalition, comprising the Guardian, BBC, Financial Times, Sky News and Telegraph Media Group (TMG), is called Publisher Usage Rights Standards (Spur). He wants global licensing frameworks to be created that would ensure AI companies have access to high-quality journalism for use in products such as chatbots, while also ensuring that publishers retain control of their content and are compensated fairly for its use.
Open letter signed by BBC director general Tim Davie; Anna Bateson, chief executive of the Guardian; David Rhodes, Sky News executive chairman; TMG managing director Anna Jones; and Jon Slade, chief executive of the FT, warn that their industry’s business model is being undermined by AI.
“Across the industry, our reports, archives, original content have become essential training material for AI systems,” they wrote. “This material was scraped, copied and reused without common standards to ensure permission or payment, undermining the economic model that supports journalism.”
The letter added: “By working across the industry, we can create systems that respect original reporting, maintain public trust, and allow both journalism and artificial intelligence to thrive.”
Generative AI models, the technology term that underpins powerful tools like OpenAI’s ChatGPT chatbot as well as Google’s video creator Veo3, need to be trained on vast amounts of data before they can generate their answers. The main source of this information is the open web, which contains a wide variety of data, from Wikipedia and YouTube content to newspaper articles and online book archives. The creative and publishing industries are demanding that AI companies obtain permission to use this work and pay them for it.
In addition to establishing licensing regimes, the coalition aims to support the creation of technical tools that protect intellectual property, ensure transparent use of journalistic content and develop common industry standards. The FT and the Guardian have signed content licensing deals with OpenAI.
