MARSEILLE, FRANCE: Around 30 European and North American media outlets on Wednesday joined a coalition launched by Britain’s BBC, Sky News and The Guardian, aiming to secure fair payment for news content from artificial intelligence giants._x000D_
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New members of the SPUR Coalition include France’s CMA Media, Switzerland’s Ringier and Canadian groups including The Globe and Mail and CBC/Radio Canada._x000D_
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“The world’s leading publishers are determined to open a new chapter in their relationship with technology platforms and public authorities,” CMA deputy chief Jean-Christophe Tortora told a gathering of global news publishers’ association WAN-IFRA in southern French city Marseille._x000D_
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He called for “a ‘new deal’ based on fair value sharing, content protection and the defence of reliable and independent journalism”._x000D_
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SPUR was co-founded by the BBC, Financial Times, Guardian Media Group, Sky News, Telegraph Media and Belgium’s Mediahuis, which operates in several European countries._x000D_
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Tortora urged French President Emmanuel Macron to raise the publishers’ concerns at this month’s meeting of G7 leaders in Evian, eastern France._x000D_
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The three-day WAN-IFRA meeting was dominated by the media sector´s fears about whether its business model can survive the emergence of artificial intelligence._x000D_
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“Tech giants strip-mine news websites without permission or compensation” to provide training data for large language models, New York Times publisher Arthur Gregg Sulzberger told the congress on Monday._x000D_
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SPUR — short for Standards for Publisher Usage Rights — argues that news content offered by media outlets comes at a high cost, and that tech and AI firms should pay a fair price for its use._x000D_
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The coalition’s initial aims include an ambitious push to develop infrastructure that would allow publishers to measure how their content is used by AI systems._x000D_
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SPUR also plans talks on how news producers can license their content._x000D_
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“Welcoming 30 new members… gives SPUR the scale required to turn its mission into a global mandate,” Guardian Media chief and SPUR founding member Anna Bateson said._x000D_
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“This collective strength will help legitimise the standards we create, safeguarding the intellectual property of publishers and providing AI developers with a route to scalable, sustainable licensing.”
