Media companies advised to ink AI licensing deals - or risk mass scraping

Media companies are being encouraged to negotiate commercial agreements with major AI organisations, or risk missing out on compensation as bots hoover up years or even decades' worth of reporting from Australian journalists.

In Anthony Albanese's recent speech on AI, the Prime Minister stressed the importance of copyright across the media industry being respected by the likes of OpenAI and Anthropic. 

Executives from Australia's largest media organisations recently spoke at the Andrew Olle Lecture, detailing their companies' vision for income streams in a new age of media and reporting.

News Corp Australasia executive chairman, Michael Miller, went so far as to suggest data mining - or "theft", as he called it - could become an existential threat to its business model.

Further decline in revenue from its news business would lead to fewer journalists employed at its major mastheads, The Daily Telegraph, Herald Sun and The Australian, Miller argued, increasingly eroding journalists' ability to hold power to account in Australia.

Many publishers have already accepted that licensing agreements with AI developers are becoming an inevitable part of the industry's future, but some legacy mastheads have refused that path, said Professor of Digital Communications and Culture at Sydney University, Terry Flew.

"We're moving into a stage where deals are being made with AI companies around rights to ingest content into large language models," Flew said.

"This is a trend that's going on around the world, with some organisations notably resisting that trend, with the New York Times being the best known internationally.

"But a lot of news organisations are cutting deals with AI companies."

While some AI companies have shown the willingness to enter into agreements for using media organisations' content for their LLMs or generative AI models, others have preferred the no-cost option, according to Post-Doctoral Research Associate in Digital Communication at Sydney University, Timothy Koskie.

"I don't know if theft is the right word, but it's certainly the case that they are bypassing the consent of the news organisations in doing this," Koskie said.

"Who are 'they'? We don't know which organisations are the most gung ho about bypassing that consent.

"But we do know that even though news organisations have flagged that they're willing to work with these organisations, they bypassed that opportunity and just decided to go for the free route, anyway."

Australian publishers also remain caught between ongoing negotiations surrounding the Government's News Media Bargaining Incentive and emerging opportunities to monetise content through AI licensing.

While Google has continued negotiating with publishers, Meta has maintained its opposition to paying for Australian news content, leaving parts of the government's platform bargaining framework unresolved.

AI reshaping how newsrooms operate

As publishers seek compensation from AI developers, many are simultaneously embracing AI tools within their own editorial operations.

This has created a difficult balancing act for news organisations attempting to set policies governing its use.

"There are some fascinating tensions in how news and journalism deals with AI," Flew said.

A recent incident saw The Sydney Morning Herald forced to take down an op-ed penned by an academic from Western Sydney University after it emerged she had used generative AI to write the article.

There was more than a dash of irony in the opinion piece's focus: why students at WSU should not use AI in their coursework to "cut corners".

In the modern publishing landscape, a lot of news, including company earnings announcements and sports results, is already being automated.

As the media industry takes tentative steps towards an uncertain future, the question will become whether automation in some aspects of the newsroom will allow journalists to focus on more in-depth reporting.

"There is a difference between reporting the result and being able to comment on the game, the teams and the players," Flew said. "There's clearly demand for the latter."

Distinguishing between human and AI-generated journalism is becoming more difficult. Some news consumers, perhaps, are not particularly interested in the distinction.

But people need some semblance of trust in their news sources.

As AI-generated content becomes more widespread, reputation will be more valuable than ever.

Newer digital publishers, such as The Daily Aus, face an uphill battle to gain credibility in a space dominated by the Nine and News Corp mastheads, public broadcasters ABC and SBS, and other established radio and television networks.

Globally, readership trust in The Guardian, New York Times and The Globe and Mail remains high.

But another challenge is how media consumption has significantly changed in the last decade.

The 6pm news and legacy newspapers are hanging on, but newsletters, video content, podcasts, as well as digital-only platforms Substack, Patreon and Medium are all taking eyeballs and ears away from traditional media.

Beyond copyright reform, the Australian Government may need to play a larger role in supporting journalism.

Job cuts within newsrooms are a regular occurrence, with Nine recently culling another 30 news production and reporting roles across its Sydney and Melbourne mastheads.

Declining advertising revenue, and the inherent limitations of subscription models with so much content available at no cost, pose a very significant threat to the traditional business model of publishers.

"The question of demand (for media consumption) always has to be tied with the question of preparedness to pay," Flew said.

Without stronger policy intervention, low quality content could increasingly fill the gap left by the empty chairs of producers, sub-editors and reporters.

AI-generated news is already pervasive on social media, and in the content of some legacy publishers. 

Ultimately, the market will decide if news content produced by AI is enough, or whether Australian consumers still crave investigative, in-depth, human-produced content.