I just ran across a speech that New York Times publisher A. G. Sulzberger gave in June about the impact of AI on journalism. He talked about “the original sin” behind AI products: “a brazen theft of intellectual property that has occurred at an unprecedented scale.” He continues:
Tech giants strip-mine news websites without permission or compensation. They repackage these stolen goods as their own, siphoning off the audiences and revenue that otherwise would go to the news organizations that created this work. And this happens not just once during the training process, but countless times every single day.
Our profession has been too quiet, too passive and too fragmented in the face of abuses by the companies leading the A.I. revolution. . . .
I tend to think of journalism as a trade rather than a profession, and I’m not used to sympathizing with the institutional interests of the Times. But in this case, those interests are also the interests of the media in general, including the conservative media, and of the public. And Sulzberger is right: The relationship between AI and publishers is parasitic.