According to the newspaper, representatives of Open AI, Google, Microsoft and Adobe met with high-ranking representatives of news media – including News Corp, Axel Springer, The New York Times and The Guardian – in the spring to discuss copyright issues linked to AI products that text bots and photo apps.
The ongoing talks are, according to the sources, at an early stage, but they could lead to agreements that pay the media companies for their content to be used in, for example, Open AI’s Chat GPT or Google’s Bard.
Some AI players, such as Stability AI and Open AI, have already been sued by artists, image agencies and programmers. They are accused, among other things, of breach of contract and copyright infringement.
News Corp CEO Robert Thomson warned as recently as May at a trade show that the AI programs are fundamentally designed so that their users will never have to visit a regular news site – which he warns will be a devastating setback for the monetization of journalism .