Publishers Form Global Coalition to Block Unlicensed AI Use of News Content

The Standards for Publisher Usage Rights (SPUR) coalition, which began in February, has expanded to more than 80 members across more than 20 nations, adding newcomers like The Atlantic and Brazil's National Association of Newspapers to founding participants such as the several outlets. Major outlets including several outlets and The Economist joined the effort on Monday, aiming to curb AI firms that use news articles to train large language models without consent.

Publishers are intensifying legal challenges, exemplified by a recent lawsuit filed by one outlet and its subsidiaries against OpenAI for alleged copyright infringement. SPUR, funded solely by its members, is creating industry-wide standards and technical tools, including a new Content Telemetry Standard, to monitor and manage AI usage of media content and to facilitate licensing deals. The coalition also highlights the impact of AI-generated search answers, which have caused a 33 % drop in organic-search referrals to thousands of sites, according to one outlet Institute report. Rebecca Grossman-Cohen of one outlet emphasized the need to balance intellectual-property protection with technological progress.