AI Revolution or Threat? Publishers Analyze Compensation and Legal Options Amid AI Disruption

Several prominent news and magazine publishers, including New York Times Co NYT, Wall Street Journal parent News Corp NWSA, Vox Media, Condé Nast parent Advance, Politico and Insider owner Axel Springer, and Dotdash Meredith parent IAC Inc IAC discussed the formation of a new coalition to address the impact of artificial intelligence on the industry.

The potential coalition remains vulnerable to individual priorities of the companies, the Wall Street Journal cites familiar sources.

The OpenAI-powered ChatGPT became an overnight global phenomenon, fueling concerns that AI could reshape many industries. The chatbot—can eloquently answer seemingly any question but is sometimes spectacularly wrong.

Lately, publishing executives have been examining how AI tools like ChatGPT leveraged their content, including assessing their compensation and legal options.

A significant concern arises from these tools offering information directly to users, eliminating the need to navigate through links and access data from sources such as articles.

The publishers were already at loggerheads with the tech firms like Alphabet Inc GOOG GOOGL Google and Meta Platforms Inc META for not reimbursing them for using their content.

IAC Chair Barry Diller, at a recent industry event, flagged the concerns related to AI content scraping—or the use of text and images available online to train the AI tools.

Axel Springer CEO Mathias Döpfner and News Corp CEO Robert Thomson voiced similar concerns.

Online content publishers also flagged threats from artificial intelligence technology’s capabilities since the arrival of chatbots capable of conversations, making up sonnets, and acing the LSAT.

Price Action: NYT shares traded lower by 0.08% at $39.62 on the last check Thursday.