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What just happened? A group of publishers, including The New York Times, The Guardian and others, have launched a campaign to demand that the US government hold Big Tech accountable for utilizing creative content in order to develop artificial-intelligence products. The “Support Responsible AI” Campaign, organized by the News/Media Alliance accuses tech companies of exploiting copyrighted materials without compensating their creators. The website of the campaign frames this practice as an immediate threat against the livelihoods of content creators. Ads in red and white with slogans such as “Protect Jobs from AI Theft,” “AI Steals from You Too,” or “Keep Watch on AI.” accompany the initiative. According to the alliance, these ads will be seen in hundreds of newspapers and digital platforms across the country in the next few days. The Atlantic, Seattle Times and Politico owner Axel Springer are also participants in the coilition.
Three demands are made by the movement to policymakers. First, the movement calls for legislation requiring Big Tech and AI firms to fairly compensate creators who use their work to train AI systems. Second, it calls for mandatory transparency regarding the attribution and sourcing of AI-generated material. It also urges action against monopolistic practices which could stifle the competition and coerce small players in the industry.
Danielle Coffey, President and CEO of News/Media Alliance, stressed that the news media is not against AI technology but advocates a balanced system which ensures responsible innovation. She said.
Similar disputes are occurring in other corners of internet. Last year, for example, on BlueSky users criticized Hugging Face’s machine learning librarian for releasing a dataset that was derived from publicly accessible BlueSky posts in order to train AI models.
Conflicts between major publishers, AI companies and other parties are not new. The New York Times filed a lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft in December 2023 accusing them of using their articles without permission to train AI models. The federal judge allowed for the case to continue, rejecting OpenAI’s attempt to dismiss it.
This US campaign is a reflection of efforts made abroad. In February, a number of prominent UK newspapers launched a initiative against unlicensed AI training on copyrighted material. Their “MAKE IT FAIR” initiative featured bold front-page statements that urged readers to support the protection of creative content from unlicensed AI systems.
