The landmark content licensing deal between German publisher Axel Springer and Microsoft-backed OpenAI marks a breakthrough in the media industry’s efforts to secure its commercial future as artificial intelligence technology takes its next generational leap.
Media groups not only face an existential threat from generative AI, which creates text, images, audio and video that is indistinguishable from that produced by humans, they are also fighting over Big Tech’s use of their content to train AI software.
Executives have focused for the past few months on ensuring that, unlike in the early years of the internet, Big Tech fairly compensates the media industry.