Guardian joins media coalition to protect original journalism from unpaid use by AI

"Across the industry, our reporting, our archives, our original content, have become foundational training material for AI systems. This material has been scraped, copied and reused with no common standards to enable permission or payment, weakening the economic model that supports journalism."

"Working across the industry, we can build systems that respect original reporting, uphold public trust, and enable both journalism and AI to thrive. Generative AI models have to be trained on a vast amount of data in order to generate their responses, with the main source being the open web."

A coalition of major UK media organizations including the Guardian, BBC, Financial Times, Sky News, and Telegraph Media Group has launched Standards for Publisher Usage Rights (Spur) to address AI companies' use of journalism without compensation. The group seeks to establish global licensing frameworks ensuring AI firms can access quality journalism for products like chatbots while guaranteeing publishers retain content control and receive fair payment. Industry leaders warn that AI systems have weakened journalism's business model by scraping and reusing original reporting, archives, and content without permission or payment standards. The coalition aims to create systems respecting original reporting, maintaining public trust, and enabling both journalism and AI to thrive sustainably.

Read at www.theguardian.com