• Publish Your article
  • Editorial Policy
  • Contact
  • Advertise
Tuesday, July 1, 2025
No Result
View All Result
UK Herald
  • Home
  • Politics
  • Business
  • Entertainment
    • All
    • Sports
    England rugby stadium Twickenham given new name after more than 100 years in shock new deal

    England rugby stadium Twickenham given new name after more than 100 years in shock new deal

    Peter Morgan dead at 65: Former Wales and Lions rugby star who became a politician passes away as club pays tribute

    Peter Morgan dead at 65: Former Wales and Lions rugby star who became a politician passes away as club pays tribute

    Horse racing tips: Unexposed Group 1 contender can stun the big guns at 14-1

    Horse racing tips: Unexposed Group 1 contender can stun the big guns at 14-1

    Woman ‘raped seven times by two French rugby stars who left her riddled with bite marks & with horror injuries’

    Woman ‘raped seven times by two French rugby stars who left her riddled with bite marks & with horror injuries’

    Horse racing tips: Gary Moore’s charge can gain revenge after falling last time out

    Horse racing tips: Gary Moore’s charge can gain revenge after falling last time out

    Ian Buckett dead at 56: Former Wales rugby star who was ‘admired and feared equally’ dies as tributes pour in

    Ian Buckett dead at 56: Former Wales rugby star who was ‘admired and feared equally’ dies as tributes pour in

    Horse racing tips: Bash the bookies with these longshots including 9-1 fancy

    Horse racing tips: Bash the bookies with these longshots including 9-1 fancy

    Shayne Philpott dead at 58 – New Zealand All Blacks rugby legend dies after suffering ‘medical event’

    Shayne Philpott dead at 58 – New Zealand All Blacks rugby legend dies after suffering ‘medical event’

    Horse racing tips: This 7-1 chance appears to have been laid out for race he won last year

    Horse racing tips: This 7-1 chance appears to have been laid out for race he won last year

  • Lifestyle
    • All
    • Fashion
    • food
    • Health
    • Travel
    Is it safe to travel to Turkey? Latest Foreign Office advice as wildfires rage in Izmir

    Is it safe to travel to Turkey? Latest Foreign Office advice as wildfires rage in Izmir

    I grew up in Yorkshire — here’s my insider’s guide to a weekend in the Dales

    I grew up in Yorkshire — here’s my insider’s guide to a weekend in the Dales

    All the food and drink banned on EasyJet, Ryanair, Jet2 and TUI flights

    All the food and drink banned on EasyJet, Ryanair, Jet2 and TUI flights

    ‘Just gorgeous’: Your favourite European islands that aren’t in Greece

    ‘Just gorgeous’: Your favourite European islands that aren’t in Greece

    ‘Charming’ city in Spain is a lesser-known gem with £40 flights and ‘hardly any tourists’

    ‘Charming’ city in Spain is a lesser-known gem with £40 flights and ‘hardly any tourists’

    Anti-tourism protesters have an important message — and it’s not for tourists

    Anti-tourism protesters have an important message — and it’s not for tourists

    ‘Ambitious’ new sleeper train will connect 100 European cities — with private rooms from £67

    ‘Ambitious’ new sleeper train will connect 100 European cities — with private rooms from £67

    Unassuming UK village is an absolute gem for foodies with ‘exceptional’ restaurants

    Unassuming UK village is an absolute gem for foodies with ‘exceptional’ restaurants

    TUI relaunches UK flights to forgotten year-round sunshine destination after 3 years

    TUI relaunches UK flights to forgotten year-round sunshine destination after 3 years

    New Alternative Treatments for Erectile Dysfunction

    New Alternative Treatments for Erectile Dysfunction

    Trending Tags

    • Golden Globes
    • Mr. Robot
    • MotoGP 2017
    • Climate Change
    • Flat Earth
  • Health
  • Opinion
  • Science
  • Tech
  • Crypto
  • Travel
  • Real Estate
  • Sports
  • More
    • Press Release
UK Herald
No Result
View All Result

Why defending current news coverage is publishers’ most important battle versus AI

by Justin Marsh
March 14, 2024
0
0
SHARES
Share on FacebookShare on TwitterReddit


Since ChatGPT was unveiled to the world in November 2022, news executives – like the rest of the media and creative industries – have been up in arms about the unauthorised use of our intellectual property (IP) for the training of artificial intelligence (AI) systems.

Whilst these disputes about historic training matter on principle and for natural justice, commercially they are largely a distraction. Instead in the news sector we should be focusing our attention on the secondary use of our data. I’ll explain why.

First though, let me be clear: there is undoubtedly a moral case to answer around training. The core principle of copyright – to reward the efforts and investment of creators, and to prevent others using their works – has been undermined.

There is a legal case too. Although there are complex issues for lawyers to unpick. There’s the application of IP law to the precise technological process of large language model (LLM) training. And there’s the jurisdictional questions on where these processes took place and where any economic damage to rights holders was incurred.

The government here in the UK seems intent on letting this play out in the courts rather than weighing in with an interpretation or a clarification of the law. Caught between the competing demands of attracting hypothetical AI investment and protecting the UK’s already world-class creative sector, they are prioritising the former. This is a shameful mistake.

Meta’s spokesperson, giving evidence to the House of Lords AI inquiry, suggested it would take a decade for legal precedents to be set. Much damage will be done in this time. As AI technology advances the risks grow of user engagement moving to synthetic instead of original media. With it move monetisation opportunities, undermining business models.

All rights-holders should be concerned. For some segments though – image libraries and periodical or non-fiction publishers for example – the threat is near-term and profound. Practically all their IP assets of economic value have been ingested and are at risk now of being substituted by users.

Value peaks and erodes quickly

News publishers are in a different, and arguably stronger, position. The training data cut-off date for any model is typically a year prior to its release. ChatGPT-4 for example, was released in March 2023 but was trained on data scraped in January 2022. That means it knows nothing of world events that occurred after that date.

The economic value of journalism is high at the time of publication and then erodes quickly. Typically traffic to an article peaks within 24 hours of its publication (and the relationship between monetisation and traffic is reasonably direct). Archival content represents a low-single-digital percentage of overall engagement with news. In short, our most valuable IP at any point in time is not in these models.

Yes, the entire output of our newsrooms since we launched our websites has been ingested for the training of these systems. And yes, we ought to be pursuing developers to make us whole after this flagrant abuse of our IP. But, frankly, to date, the economic damage has not been that great and strategically, the industry should instead be focused on the secondary use of our data by trained models through the processes of ‘grounding’ or ‘retrieval augmented generation’.

These secondary mechanisms entail directing a LLM at another source of information. Whilst, off-the-shelf, a model knows how words relate to each other statistically based on its training corpus, it does not have an understanding of the meaning of words or phrases. This results in responses that are plausible, syntactically and semantically correct, but factually inaccurate.

The use of an additional, secondary source of data means the AI can base its response on known, verified information. Or it can double-check its output. Google and OpenAI are already using this technology to improve their products – see Gemini’s Check with Google feature and ChatGPT’s browsing mode. These developments markedly improve the utility of AI chatbots, particularly for news and current events.

Real-time remuneration

Google, OpenAI and Anthropic have all given website owners the option to disallow their scraping bots. Despite this, AI firms will be looking for real-time access to premium, trusted content. A few licensing deals have been signed and more are there to be done. The reality though is that they will only be available to some publishers; global, premium content will be in demand.

Securing licences for grounding data creates substantial value for AI developers and the users of their services. And it does so without prejudicing the ongoing legal fights around training, which is likely a red line; it would threaten to crush even OpenAI, with its $80bn valuation, if it had to negotiate and buy licences for training (ChatGPT-4 was trained on 570GB of textual data from websites, books and articles etc.)

News publishers need to approach these deals with caution, though. Whilst they have the potential to deliver much-needed incremental revenue, the strategic interests of parties are not aligned. Despite what they may say, ultimately AI developers want to provide a one-stop, ‘answer anything’ assistant. That is the fundamental purpose of the technology and it doesn’t sit comfortably with publishers’ business models which rely on driving engagement on owned-and-operated platforms.

The devil will be in the detail and careful consideration will need to be given to the exact terms. For publishers the substitution risks are high and whether a particular agreement makes sense will hinge on price, summarisation format, attribution, branding and links back to the source.

The fight around training data is a noble one. And it is critical for the creative industries – and I would argue, society – that the principles of intellectual property prevail. But it would be better for the news media sector if we focused on how we are remunerated for journalism in real-time; where the true value is anyway.

The post Why defending current news coverage is publishers’ most important battle versus AI appeared first on Press Gazette.



Source link

Related Posts

UK and US publishers back move to block AI scrapers by default

UK and US publishers back move to block AI scrapers by default

by Justin Marsh
July 1, 2025
0

Internet infrastructure provider Cloudflare is now blocking all AI scrapers accessing content by default in an industry first. The move has been backed by more than a dozen major news and media...

Google’s site reputation abuse policy: the wrong solution to a real problem

Google’s site reputation abuse policy: the wrong solution to a real problem

by Justin Marsh
June 26, 2025
0

Google last year began cracking down on sites with strong search authority “abusing” their position by adding third-party commercial content such as an affiliate shopping arm or voucher code section. However many...

Top Invoice Finance Providers in the UK for 2025

Top Invoice Finance Providers in the UK for 2025

by Clara White
June 25, 2025
0

In today's fast-paced business environment, maintaining healthy cash flow is crucial for companies of all sizes. For many UK businesses, invoice finance has emerged as a vital solution to bridge the working...

Ian Key: North of England tabloid reporter who worked with integrity and passion

Ian Key: North of England tabloid reporter who worked with integrity and passion

by Justin Marsh
June 21, 2025
0

Ian Key – who spent many years working for the Daily Express, Daily Mail, Today and the News of the World – has died suddenly at home aged 78. He spent the majority...

News diary 16-22 June: US Tiktok sell-or-ban deadline, Chris Brown in UK court

News diary 16-22 June: US Tiktok sell-or-ban deadline, Chris Brown in UK court

by Justin Marsh
June 16, 2025
0

A look ahead at the key events leading the news agenda next week, from the team at Foresight News. Leading the week Following this week’s Spending Review, we’re on the lookout next...

Daily Star drops page three pictures of scantily dressed women in redesign

Daily Star drops page three pictures of scantily dressed women in redesign

by Justin Marsh
June 11, 2025
0

The Daily Star has ditched page three models amid a wider redesign across print and online. The revamp includes a new rhombus-shaped logo, first used on the masthead on Wednesday’s paper, and...

Next Post
Trauma Cleaning Cleaning

Exploring the Different Techniques Used in Specialized Crime Scene Clean-up Services

Popular News

AXIOM-4: What will be the role of Shubhanshu Shukla in the mission? What did India send in space? What will India benefit?

AXIOM-4: What will be the role of Shubhanshu Shukla in the mission? What did India send in space? What will India benefit?

July 1, 2025
UK and US publishers back move to block AI scrapers by default

UK and US publishers back move to block AI scrapers by default

July 1, 2025
Labour can’t just throw money at nuclear and hope it works

Labour can’t just throw money at nuclear and hope it works

June 30, 2025
Is it safe to travel to Turkey? Latest Foreign Office advice as wildfires rage in Izmir

Is it safe to travel to Turkey? Latest Foreign Office advice as wildfires rage in Izmir

June 30, 2025
Tesla Car Factory arrives at the owner’s house without a driver: the price of auto drive cars will be shocked

Tesla Car Factory arrives at the owner’s house without a driver: the price of auto drive cars will be shocked

June 29, 2025
Week-in-Review: Welfare rebellion has permanently damaged Starmer

Week-in-Review: Welfare rebellion has permanently damaged Starmer

June 28, 2025
I grew up in Yorkshire — here’s my insider’s guide to a weekend in the Dales

I grew up in Yorkshire — here’s my insider’s guide to a weekend in the Dales

June 27, 2025
UK Herald

All Rights Reserved © UK HERALD - The Voice of UK

Important Links

  • Publish Your article
  • Editorial Policy
  • Contact
  • Advertise

...

No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • Politics
  • UK News
  • Business
  • Science
  • National
  • Entertainment
  • Gaming
  • Sports
  • Fashion
  • Lifestyle
  • Travel
  • Health
  • Food

All Rights Reserved © UK HERALD - The Voice of UK