No crawling without consent, credit and compensation

Large language models (LLMs) are harming publishers in two ways. First, AI companies are flagrantly scraping and summarizing content directly from published news articles via retrieval-augmented generation. Second, because AI overviews are significantly more comprehensive than the snippets associated with traditional links, users may feel they have no reason to click through to the source article on a publisher’s website.”

Paul Deegan, president and CEO, News Media Canada

For generations, news publishers monetized their fact-based, fact-checked journalistic content by selling advertising and subscriptions against it. While generative artificial intelligence (AI) has enormous potential for good, left unchecked, it will eviscerate the economics of the publishing business.

A little over a year ago, Elizabeth Reid, vice president and head of search at Google, announced, “AI Overviews will begin rolling out to everyone in the U.S., with more countries coming soon. That means that this week, hundreds of millions of users will have access to AI Overviews, and we expect to bring them to over a billion people by the end of the year.”

In making the announcement, Ms. Reid wrote, “With AI Overviews, people are visiting a greater diversity of websites for help with more complex questions. We also see that the links included in AI Overviews receive more clicks than if the page had appeared as a traditional web listing for that query. As we expand this experience, we’ll continue to focus on sending valuable traffic to publishers and creators.”

So, how is it going? BrightEdge, a firm specializing in search engine optimization and content performance, released new research on the first anniversary of Google AI Overviews, which found a nearly 30% reduction in click-throughs since May 2024.

So much for more clicks…

Large language models (LLMs) are harming publishers in two ways. First, AI companies are flagrantly scraping and summarizing content directly from published news articles via retrieval-augmented generation. Second, because AI overviews are significantly more comprehensive than the snippets associated with traditional links, users may feel they have no reason to click through to the source article on a publisher’s website. With the user staying within Big Tech’s increasingly tall-walled garden, rather than being directed electronically to news websites via links, publishers are deprived of audience, and their ability to sell advertising and subscriptions is significantly diminished. No clicks mean no cash for news businesses. Yet, AI companies are selling ads against copyrighted (and often paywalled) content as well as subscriptions for their premium products.  

Readers are being harmed, too. First, there are numerous examples of AI overviews serving up inaccurate, irrelevant, outdated and even harmful information. That is because the LLMs do not adhere to journalistic standards. Second, if publishers cannot monetize their content, they cannot reinvest in the accurate and authoritative journalism that readers rely on to make informed decisions, thereby empowering them to participate effectively in democratic processes.

In a recent op-ed in the New York Post, Danielle Coffey, president and chief executive officer of News/Media Alliance, which represents American publishers, wrote, “Big Tech’s dirty secret is that the success of its AI tools has been almost entirely built on theft.”

Last November, OpenAI was sued by a group of Canadian publishers, including The Canadian Press, Torstar, The Globe and Mail, Postmedia and CBC/Radio-Canada. In February, publishers, including The Toronto Star, Condé Nast, McClatchy, Forbes and The Guardian, sued Canadian AI company Cohere, alleging the company produced word-for-word copies of thousands of news articles without permission or compensation.

How can policymakers help scale innovation leaders while ensuring the ethical, positive and responsible use of AI? Through reasonable guardrails: First, intellectual property should be protected. Second, platforms should provide fair compensation to publishers. Third, platforms should provide clear attribution to source content. Fourth, publishers should be allowed to opt out of AI overviews without their websites being removed from search. Fifth, platforms should not discriminate in the ranking of search results.

In summary, to ensure our free and plural press remains commercially viable, there should be no AI crawling without consent, credit and compensation.

Paul Deegan is the president and chief executive officer of News Media Canada. He can be reached at pdeegan@newsmediacanada.ca