Media Alliance to Counter AI
Major agencies and newspapers join the SPOR alliance to strengthen negotiations with AI companies
Translated by Qiyas from الراي — Original source
Paris, AFP – Agence France-Presse (AFP), France Radio, and The New York Times, along with approximately forty other media outlets, have joined a global publishers’ coalition to strengthen their negotiating power with artificial intelligence companies and secure fair compensation for the use of their content, the alliance announced.
Among the new members raising the number of SPARC (Standards for Publisher Content Usage Rights) coalition members to more than eighty are the magazines Lequipe, The Atlantic, The Observer, and The Economist, as well as publishers’ associations from Brazil, Japan, Argentina, and Colombia.
The coalition, co-founded by prominent British institutions including the BBC, Sky News, and The Guardian, stated that it “brings together publishers to create a fair market for the use of content by AI systems.”
In a statement, Fabrice Fraysse, chairman of AFP, said, “AI assistants answer millions of people’s questions daily using information that was often first gathered and verified by news agency journalists. The value of this original work must be recognized, its source attributed, and compensation paid.”
David Battel, co-founder and spokesperson for the coalition, added, “We cannot simply hope that things will work out between AI companies and the publishing sector in the future. Media institutions around the world must unite to protect themselves, each other, and the future of journalism.”
AFP emphasized in its statement that “objectively documenting these uses is a prerequisite for any negotiation.”
Securing compensation for content usage is seen as a vital issue for media organizations, whose business models face competition from social networks, major digital platforms, and AI services such as ChatGPT and Google’s AI summaries.
On June 1, Arthur Gregory Sulzberger, chairman of The New York Times, delivered a forceful speech at the World News Publishers Association conference, stating that “tech giants are looting news websites without permission or compensation. They attribute these stolen contents to themselves as if they were their own, thereby capturing their audiences and revenues.”
Other media organizations, including News Corp, owner of The Wall Street Journal; Le Monde; The Washington Post; Axel Springer, owner of Politico, Bild, and Die Welt, have formed partnerships with OpenAI, while AFP has entered into a partnership with the French company Mistral.
