FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Arlington, VA – Today the News/Media Alliance released new AI Principles that provide overarching guidance for generative artificial intelligence (GAI) systems’ use of journalistic and creative content. The Principles cover issues with respect to GAI developers’ use of members’ content related to intellectual property, transparency, accountability, fairness, safety, and design and apply to all content, including text, images, audiovisual and all other formats.
The News/Media Alliance represents over 2,000 print and digital news and magazine media companies, from small, local outlets to national and international publications read around the world. Every day, these publishers invest in producing high-quality creative content that is engaging, informative, trustworthy, accurate and reliable. They not only make significant economic contributions in this content, but they also play a crucial role in educating and informing our communities, ensuring a strong democracy and economy.
“The Principles emphasize that emerging technologies such as AI must continue to respect publishers’ intellectual property (IP), brands, reader relationships, and investments made in creating quality journalistic and creative content,” stated News/Media Alliance Executive Vice President and General Counsel Danielle Coffey. “Publishers must be fairly compensated for the tremendous value their content contributes to the development of generative AI technology. It’s a simple exchange of value.”
The News/Media Alliance’s Principles stipulate that GAI developers and deployers must negotiate with publishers for the right to use their content in any of the following manners:
- Training: Including publishers’ content in datasets and using it for GAI system training and testing.
- Surfacing: The serving of publishers’ content in response to user inputs, possibly including a cover note generated by the GAI system of what is contained in the surfaced content.
- Synthesizing: Summaries, explanations, analyses etc. of source content in response to a query.
Among other things, the AI Principles outline the need for GAI developers to obtain explicit permission for use of publishers’ intellectual property, and publishers should have the right to negotiate for fair compensation for use of their IP by these developers.
The Alliance has been advocating for the passage of the Journalism Competition & Preservation Act (JCPA), which would allow publishers to negotiate collectively with the Big Tech platforms for fair compensation for use of their content, including use for AI purposes. Currently, publishers do not have the ability to negotiate these deals on their own, as the dominant tech platforms capture the majority of U.S. digital ad revenue, leaving publishers with little to reinvest in the production of high-quality journalism. The bill, which nearly passed into law in 2022, was reintroduced in the Senate in March 2023 and has strong bipartisan support.
Coffey added, “The tech platforms clearly cannot be trusted to self-regulate and instead, are increasing their anticompetitive behavior to the detriment of local journalism. We must ensure that value is rightfully returned to the creators of quality journalism, which in turn will be reinvested in providing the content that our country wants, needs and depends on to stay informed.”
The AI Principles can be found on the Alliance website here.
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Media Contact:
Lindsey Loving
Director, Communications
lindsey@newsmediaalliance.org
The News/Media Alliance is a nonprofit organization representing more than 2,000 news and magazine media organizations and their multiplatform businesses in the United States and globally. Alliance members include print and digital publishers of original journalism. Headquartered just outside Washington, D.C., the association focuses on ensuring the future of journalism through communication, research, advocacy, and innovation. Information about the News/Media Alliance can be found at www.newsmediaalliance.org.
Members of the News/Media Alliance staff have contributed to this post.
