Media companies likely to seek compensation from AI firms

The surge in artificial intelligence has caught the attention of the media industry who say they should receive compensation by firms if they scrape their content and distribute it online.

A spokeswoman for Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus said the government was considering AI impacts on the copyright system. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Martin Ollman

Swift action is needed to ensure media outlets are paid for their content that is used by artificial intelligence firms and distributed to a mass audience, according to a leading technology expert.

Peter Lewis, a fellow at the Australia Institute Centre for Responsible Technology, said the early introduction of safeguards in relation to AI services was crucial, as businesses – including media firms – were in the dark as to what information was being put into search engines.

“Putting in a few rules and guardrails early on seems to not only be in the interest of the public but also in the interests of the technologies,” he told The Australian.

“We don’t even know what the source material Chat GPT is basing its outputs on – for instance if you type in ‘Why did Russia invade Ukraine’, we don’t know if it’s based on journalism, propaganda or academic propaganda.

“You are going to have a better output if you do use as your sourced material professional journalism and academia … and it’s only natural that there should be payment for it.”

AI chatbot services allow firms to respond to questions that are typed into their search engines – they collate information available online in its answers, however it is not clear what sources are being used in the answers published.

News Corporation’s chief executive Robert Thomson addressed a Morgan Stanley technology, media and telecom conference last week and said generative AI was a “fascinating emerging issue”.

“We’re spending a lot of time examining it,” Mr Thomson said.

Robert Thomson

He also noted that News Corp, publisher of The Australian, had started discussions with a “certain party who shall remain nameless” about the use of AI.

“Certain people talk about open source, well, clearly, they are using proprietary content, there should be, obviously, some compensation for that,” Mr Thomson said in his address.

“The more specialist the engine gets, for example, in business, they’re obviously using Dow Jones content. Then you have the actual surfacing of articles through AI, and there should be compensation for that.

“And then the most fascinating one: a lot of these engines are focused on synthesising aggregated content. That’s often our content.

“They would argue that by synthesising it and extracting the essence of the content, they’re providing a transformational service.”

Mr Thomson said AI firms “wouldn’t be able to provide any service without our content so there are three tiers where we’re entering into discussions, shall we say, with different companies”.

In 2021, laws were passed under the News Media Bargaining Code that required tech giants, including Meta (previously Facebook) and Google, to enter a commercial relationship and pay Australian news outlets for publishing their content on their sites.

The rise of AI services has raised questions whether a similar approach should be adopted for the use of news content from media sites and what measures are in place to control its use.

A spokeswoman for Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus said the government was considering these issues, which were discussed at a ministerial roundtable on copyright last month.

“Participants in the inaugural roundtable raised a wide range of priorities and issues impacting Australia’s copyright system,” the government spokeswoman said.

“There was general agreement to continue discussions this year on an initial five reform issues including the implications of artificial intelligence for copyright law.”

Opposition communications spokesman David Coleman said he had been in discussions with industry leaders about the risks AI posed.

“AI is an astonishing technology that will change the world forever,” he said. “It is likely to have massive impacts on the Australian media sector.

“The government must demonstrate to industry and the public that it actually understands how AI will impact business and private users alike.

“There is no time to waste.”