STANDING UP TO BIG TECH

Preserving journalism in the era of Al will most likely require a system that incorporates prior authorization as the default for training uses and a fixed payment scale. But pressure from Big Tech to shoot down any legislation that requires remuneration for training materials is mounting

- Anya Schiffrin & Roberta Carlini

Media outlets worldwide are dying. On top of a persistent lack of funding, they must now contend with Al summaries and chatbots, which are siphoning away audiences. A recent study found that in 2025, online traffic to news sites fell by one-third. This problem should concern everyone, not just journalists and media executives, because democratic societies cannot function without quality information.

At a time of polarization, fragmentation, and democratic backsliding, news outlets that provide quality journalism are more necessary than ever.

But to produce it, publishers must be compensated — a perennial problem in the internet age. For years, search engines like Google and social-media platforms like Facebook profited handsomely from news content while paying outlets little or nothing. The same is true of Al firms, which scraped the content they needed to train their large language models without compensating its producers or obtaining their consent. Since then, OpenAl has made deals with a few major publishers (including News Corp, Axel Springer, and Le Monde) to ensure that ChatGPT has access to the latest information. But many others have been left out in the cold.