Microsoft is working on a Publisher Content Marketplace (PCM)a system designed to remunerate editors for the use of their content in artificial intelligence products. The company presented the idea in a meeting with media executives, where it defended that “editors deserve to be paid for the quality of their intellectual property.” The project will initially be launched as a pilot with a small group of partners only in the United States, but the intention of extending it progressively.
The initiative appears at a time when tensions between the journalistic industry and artificial intelligence suppliers have been in a delicate situation for some time, and since the phenomenon of generative AI began to consolidate, editors have denounced that their contents are used massively to train models without consent or compensation. These complaints have already resulted in legal actions, such as the demand of the New York Times against Microsoft and Openai, or that presented by Authors Guild together with renowned authors.
However, it is not a few isolated cases. More than 200 journalistic organizations have already requested the United States government to establish a regulatory framework that forces technological to ask permission and pay for the use of content. The debate also includes the misinformation risks derived from the hallucinations of the models, which sometimes mistakenly attribute information to legitimate means. The main thing, yes, is in the pecuniary aspect.
Until now, the most widespread approach has been the signature of individual license agreements, as happened with Openai and Associated Press or Axel Springer, a movement that the company maintains with other editors to incorporate its contents into Chatgpt and future models. Microsoft’s proposal, meanwhile, introduces A more structured approach, with a marketplace that would allow the media to receive income continuously depending on the use of its material, starting with the use made by the same co -pilot.
Other companies look for different approaches, depending on each case where their business is. Cloudflare, for example, has announced that it will block the content extraction bots for AI and that it will offer editors a payment system per access, with rates set by each medium, all with the objective is to give more control to the websites and ensure that any use of its contents is linked to financial compensation.
Microsoft’s proposal aims to establish a broader and more predictable framework than specific agreements. Although it is an initiative still very early, it could become a precedent for the industry. We will have to see now if the giants of their surroundings agree to leave the company leading alone a kind of private regulation In such a decisive matter. This, in addition, refers in principle only to the American field.
Meanwhile, in Europe there is already a community directive that gives publishers a specific right to negotiate with platforms -the same that led to the return to Spain of Google News after years of absence. However, these regulations do not explicitly add the use of content to train AI models, with the consequent legal vacuum. The situation points, therefore, that the debate will also intensify in Spain and the EU.
