Crikey, Broadsheet lead smaller publisher push for AI deals
Smaller publishers have joined the effort to secure compensation for use of their content in generative AI platforms, but have split with media giants over the way it should work.
Smaller Australian publishers are urging the government to avoid repeating the mistakes of the media bargaining code as they band together in a bid to secure compensation from tech giants for the use of their content in artificial intelligence platforms.
Local media businesses including Crikey publisher Private Media and lifestyle content player Broadsheet Media are among a troupe of digital publishers lobbying the federal government to regulate the threat AI poses to both the creation of content and the way it's distributed.
Will Hayward, chief executive of Private Media, said while he’s optimistic about the impacts generative AI will have on the news business, he still thinks publishers should be appropriately compensated for their reporting so they can continue to produce it. But using the News Media Bargaining Code to achieve that isn’t something he’d support.
“I think it’s a massive red herring to obsess over the fact that a bunch of Californians are desperately scraping news.com.au, thinking that’s how they’re going to build their next billion-dollar business,” Hayward told Capital Brief.
