Creators of artificial intelligence (AI)-driven apps should pay for news and content used to improve their products, the chief executive of News Corp Australia has said.
In an editorial in The Australian on April 2, Michael Miller called on "creators of original news and content" to avoid past mistakes that "destroyed their industry" by allowing tech companies to use their stories and information for free. A chatbot is software that can ingest news, data and other information to generate responses to queries that mimic human written or spoken speech, most notably AI firm OpenAI's ChatGPT-4 chatbot.
According to Miller, the meteoric rise of generative AI represents yet another move by powerful digital companies to develop “a new pot of gold that maximizes revenue and profits by acquiring the creative content of others without paying them for their original work.” In the case of OpenAI, Miller claims the company "quickly built a $30 billion business" by "using other people's original content and creativity, without compensation and attribution."
The Australian federal government implemented the News Media Bargaining Act in 2021, which requires tech platforms in Australia to pay news publishers for news content made available or linked to on their platforms. AI needs similar laws so that all content creators are properly compensated for their work, Miller said. "Creators should be rewarded for their original work to be used by AI engines that attack the style and tone of not only journalists, but (to name a few) musicians, writers, poets, historians, painters, filmmakers, people and photographers."
More than 2,600 technology leaders and researchers recently signed an open letter urging a moratorium on further development of artificial intelligence (AI), fearing "profound risks to society and humanity". Meanwhile, Italy’s data protection watchdog announced a temporary block on ChatGPT and launched an investigation into alleged violations of data privacy rules. Miller argues that both content creators and AI companies could benefit from the agreement, rather than outright blocking or banning the technology.
With "proper guardrails," he wrote, AI has the potential to become a valuable news resource. It can help create content, "gather facts faster," help publish on multiple platforms and can speed up video production. The crypto industry is also starting to see more projects using artificial intelligence, although it is still in its early stages.
Miller argues that if AI engines fail to convince the public that their information is trustworthy and trustworthy, their future success is at risk, adding that "in order to achieve this, they will have to fairly compensate those Someone who provides substance to their success.”
