Publishers fear AI chatbots will reduce readership

The News Media Alliance, which represents 2,000 media outlets worldwide, including The New York Times, is working on principles it says should guide the use and development of AI systems, as well as the regulation around them. , to protect publishers. According to one draft, the principles state that use of publisher content for AI development should require “negotiated agreement and explicit permission.”

The guidelines also call on tech companies to “deliver sufficient value” for high-quality, trustworthy journalism content and brands, and state that any new laws or regulations that provide exceptions to copyright law for AI should not weaken publisher protections.

“Without these protections, publishers – too many of whom are already struggling to survive in the online ecosystem due to market imbalances – face an existential crisis that threatens our communities’ access to reliable journalism. and trustworthy,” the document reads.

Danielle Coffey, executive vice president of the News Media Alliance, said a solution could be found in the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act, a bill that would allow publishers to bargain collectively with tech companies on revenue sharing and, as written, would account for the use of content by generative AI The bill, which did not pass last year, is expected to be reintroduced Thursday by Senators Amy Klobuchar, Democrat of Minnesota, and John Kennedy, Republican of Louisiana.

Yusuf Mehdi, head of Bing at Microsoft, said in an interview that directing users to publishers was “a top priority.” And although the new Bing has been around for less than two months, the data “already showed that we are, in fact, driving more traffic to publishers,” he said.

“Part of the reason traffic is up is that we’re not just answering the question correctly, but providing links,” he said, pointing to footnotes in responses on Bing’s chatbot that indicate the source of the information.

Mehdi said Microsoft was early in its conversations with publishers around the new search. “We intend to share the additional revenue generated from this chat experience,” he said.