Big Tech is bleeding journalism dry...
Big Tech is bleeding journalism dry...
At a time when we need quality journalism more than ever.
My Take:
News publishers have been getting the short end of the stick from Big Tech for a while. AI is well-positioned as the “future of search,” but because GenAI models are trained on publishers’ content and material across the web for free, there is a risk that users stop engaging with publishers’ sites at all. If users don't click through to publishers’ sites and content, publishers -- who are already on the bubble -- face imminent extinction, imperiling free and fair press and democracies everywhere.
This isn't a far-off problem. The LATimes laid off 23% of their newsroom last month. Time Magazine laid off 15% of its editorial staff. The news industry cut about 20,000 jobs in 2023. While most of these layoffs have little to do with AI in particular, they can all be mapped back to the way that publishers are financially used and abused by Big Tech platforms.
When it comes to OpenAI vs. NYTimes, many see the outcome as potentially cataclysmic. From my vantage point, OpenAI is making bad arguments. They’re looking to justify training their models on NYT content as “fair use” and wrap it in a “progress trumps everything else” argument. However, training your model with copyrighted content with the intent to profit off the output is certainly not a case of “fair use."
Most blatantly and despite its name, OpenAI is not candid about what data its models have been trained on. Additionally, they do not inform users when the generated outputs have been trained on copyrighted materials. In this way, OpenAI fits neatly within the tradition of Silicon Valley giants who take liberties with data to drive profit.
After raising $13 billion from Microsoft, OpenAI can afford to settle in this case and others like it. I’m hopeful that OpenAI and Sam Altman will conclude that they can’t just kick the can down the road – and that, if they tried, we will all pay for years to come.