Some French publishers are giving AI revenue directly to journalists. Could that ever happen in the U.S.?

"In the U.S., when a publisher signs a licensing deal with an AI company, newsroom staffers don't get a cut. Many newsrooms have licensed their content to OpenAI in bulk, for example. A staff reporter's stories can be used as training data for the latest GPT model, or may surface in ChatGPT's response to a user question. Does that reporter deserve to be compensated directly for how their work is being used by OpenAI? In France, the answer is, increasingly, yes."

"At least, that's the logic underlying a host of agreements between French news publishers and trade unions, which are redistributing revenue from AI licensing deals directly to journalists. These agreements guarantee that if a reporter's stories are being used by AI companies, they will share directly in the publisher's earnings. In some cases, the agreements put a fixed sum of several hundred euros into the pockets of newsroom staffers each year."

"To an American journalist, these arrangements can feel foreign or out of reach. The dynamics on the ground in the U.S. are strikingly different from those in France; American newsrooms operate under a different intellectual property framework and with far fewer economic protections for unions. Most newsroom unions in the U.S. have never seen the terms of their employers' AI licensing deals, let alone successfully negotiated for a share."

Many U.S. publishers sign licensing deals with AI companies without sharing revenue with newsroom staffers, allowing reporters' stories to train models or appear in AI responses. French publishers and unions are redistributing AI licensing revenue directly to journalists through agreements that guarantee payments when reporters' work is used by AI companies. Payments take forms such as fixed annual sums of several hundred euros or percentage shares of licensing revenue; Le Monde committed 25% of its AI licensing revenue with no ceiling. French licensing deals commonly rely on neighboring rights law. U.S. newsrooms face different intellectual property frameworks and weaker union protections.

Read at Nieman Lab