“Publishers are determined not to repeat what many see as the mistakes of the social media era, in which they gave away their content for free. And tech executives are eager to avoid new allegations that they’re destroying democracy and journalism — and the attendant congressional hearings.”
– Ben Smith.
A small but powerful group of publishers is organizing to receive compensation from large language model (LLM) companies that use their content for training data, reports Semaphor. The group includes The New York Times, News Corp., Axel Springer, and IAC.
Publishers face losing income-producing traffic from search referrals if information retrieval habits shift from search to LLMs.
The applicability of copyright law to training data for LLMs is undecided.
Publishers want billions, not millions, from AI
SEMAPHOR | July 23, 2023 | by Ben Smith