Bills & Corporate Greed: The Struggles Of Building An AI Content Economy

The transition is well underway; the entire digital news industry is undergoing a massive metamorphosis thanks to generative AI. In a perfect world, the transition would be graceful, with governments and companies developing an AI content economy that would suit all involved. That would be the ideal scenario. AI companies would access content from consenting outlets and compensate them properly.

However, that’s not the case, as several governments are playing cat and mouse with companies like Google and Meta. In turn, the journalism industry is worse off, with history repeating itself over and over again. For example, several governments, chiefly Canada, Australia, and California, have demanded that Google and Meta compensate the journalists whose data they scrape. Well, Oregon is proposing SB 686, a bill that will push both companies to pay journalists in the state.

The end goal is to establish some sort of harmony between journalists, AI companies, and governments. However, there are several roadblocks that keep them from reaching it. Can we continue down this path and expect some sort of solution to pop up out of nowhere?

What would an AI content economy look like?

The issue with AI content stems from the fact that human beings create news content and post it to the internet. Many companies index that content for several reasons, and one reason is to scrape it for AI tools. Google indexes a ton of websites each second to generate its AI overviews. Imagine writing a news article just to have it overlooked for an AI-generated overview.

This costs websites money, as many of them rely on ad revenue, which can only be generated when people visit their sites. If people are just getting summaries of your articles instead of visiting your website, they’re absorbing your content, and you’re not getting any income from it. Not only that, but both Google and Meta are working to monetize their AI overviews, which adds insult to injury.

A sustainable economy

A sustainable AI content economy would ensure that you, as the journalist, would be properly compensated for your work. Publications would be able to distribute their content on these platforms and decide whether they want to make their content available to be used by AI. If they contribute to the AI, then they would get some sort of payment for it. This would help publications stay afloat to continue producing content. We’re talking about a symbiotic relationship between publishers and the platforms, much like how things were before.

Larger companies may not necessarily get more money. Ideally, publications whose content makes up more of the scraped content would get a bigger check. That seems fair, as publications didn’t ask for AI tech to overtake their positions.

AI companies sometimes speak as though publications post their content with the intention of having it scraped. Google and Meta are some of the biggest ad and distribution companies in the world. If you want your content to mean a damn, you’d have to rely on those companies. This doesn’t only go for Meta and Google. There are other companies like OpenAI and Perplexity that also scrape a ton of data for their AI search tools.

Journalists’ content is being stretched between all of these platforms, but only a small number of them are getting any sort of pay. They’d either have to make and sell their content to these companies in multimillion-dollar deals or settle for working for nothing.

An actual AI content economy would ensure that ultimatums like those won’t be the reality.

What is SB 686?

If you’re familiar with the drama that happened between the Canadian, Australian, and Californian governments and companies like Google and Meta, then you should know what SB 686 is. This is a bill proposed by the Oregon government aiming to push Google and Meta to properly compensate its journalists. The companies will need to provide money to the publications for the right to use their content to train AI models and summarize their articles.

A 2023 study puts the total amount of money each company generated from news media at $12.9 billion. If Google and Meta were to pay a lump sum to Oregon, then they would pay the state $122 million in total each year. That money would go to help Oregon publications, both large and small. Most of the money would help publications with more than $100,000 in annual revenue. A smaller portion (10%) would go to smaller publications.

If not that, then the companies could enter an arbitration deal with the publications to determine a proper amount. Either way, publications would be paid their dues for having their content scraped.

The bill’s heart is in the right place

Bills like these get right to the meat of the issue. They aim to push the companies profiting off stolen content to pay up. Google and Meta both know what they’re doing when they summarize content from publications. However, despite the pleas from millions, they’re continuing down their path, mowing down journalists and their publications.

Injecting money back into these publications would help them stay afloat and keep journalists working. So, we can’t argue that their efforts are commendable.

However, corporate greed is the Achilles’ heel of these bills

As stated before, history keeps repeating itself. Google’s share of the $122 million would be $104 million. Considering that Google paid Apple $20 billion each year to be the default search engine on iPhones, you’d think that $104 million would be chump change for the search giant.

However, both Google and Meta have an issue with this bill. They’re lobbying to stop it from going through. Meta, which would have to pay $18 million each year (a company that earned $164.5 billion in revenue last year), made the point that publishers willingly chose to put their content on its platforms.

These two companies own bread factories, yet aren’t willing to share crumbs. We hear stories about how they’re investing billions into AI, and other technologies, but they’re unwilling to pay small sums to help the industry that they’re basically carrying.

Bigger issue

The issue isn’t only that these companies don’t want to pay. Along with that, they have the tendency to bully the industry when governments want them to pay. Google threatened to stop showing news articles from California-based publications, which would horribly cripple the state’s news media culture. Not only that, but Meta pulled out of Canada when pressed to pay. This resulted in several publications shuttering.

Instead of finding a solution, Google and Meta are willing to let the industry burn just to get a point across. So, what’s to stop them from doing the same thing with Oregon? Nothing. If they pull out of Oregon, then it would do more damage to the state’s journalists, causing publications to suffer or even shut down. Then, we’d have no chance of establishing an AI content economy.

However, the companies’ fears are valid

Google and Meta oppose these bills. While it’s frustrating that they don’t want to play nice, we can’t argue that their reasons are a bit justified. It’s not just about not wanting to pay $122 million each year. The thing is that if one bill passes, it could set a precedent, prompting many other states and countries to do the same thing. Each state would establish bills for their own yearly fees, and that cost will add up.

At some point, it would become financially unviable to distribute wealth to publications. So, while one state won’t be a problem, we can see how all 50 states, plus numerous countries, would be an issue.

Also, Google and Meta can’t pull to bully those places like before. They can’t pull out of… the world. So, it’s at least understandable from that point of view.

There needs to be another solution

As such, if we want a solution that can suit all parties, then there needs to be an agreement between the governments and companies. Bills like SB 686 would be great if Oregon were the only place affected. However, the issue is much larger than the state, and it’s much larger than the companies themselves. The core issue underlines all forms of AI-generated content. People placed their content on the internet for years and one day woke up to find that it’s been scraped to train AI models that can replace them.

Bills that push companies to pay specific economic regions show a lack of union and planning. They only lead to the same song and dance playing out. Bill comes around, companies push against it, they pull out, rinse, and repeat. It’s like a dog chasing its own tail.

There needs to be a change in how companies and governments handle things. We can’t keep letting companies get away with stealing content and making excuses. Also, we can’t keep having governments push bills that they know will be opposed. Rather than forcing companies to pay journalists and bullying governments by pulling out, it’d be better if both sides came together.

Coming together

We need the governments and companies to sit down and develop a new system together. This patchwork of greed, bills, and retaliation just isn’t working. It’s basically a war between the companies, governments, and publications. There needs to be a unified solution among all sides.

Maybe they could find a middle ground that won’t force the companies to pay 100% of the fees for journalists. Also, they could develop a system that doesn’t require companies like OpenAI to make expensive deals with large media outlets for their media. We need a system that lets companies consent to having their data scraped and receive compensation.

Going on like this…

There is a lot at stake if we can’t come together and create a working AI content economy. At this point, AI is quickly changing how news is distributed and absorbed. Whether we like it or not, this is the reality. Sure, it could pad the pockets of the companies distributing the news, but that’s not the most important thing.

The future of journalism and of how we get our news is in trouble. Right now, AI tools, for as smart as they are, can’t properly summarize news stories. So, if you read news from an AI-generated overview, you run the risk of getting improper information. This is with companies scraping tons of data from countless publications.

However, what will happen if thousands of publications shut down due to a lack of funding? The stream of news will diminish, and it will make it harder for the models to summarize the news. This means that the problem will get even worse. Imagine a world where the most accessible tools produce false information most of the time.

This isn’t a simple problem, so it doesn’t have a simple solution. However, if we don’t make the proper changes, the outcome will be pretty simple: hardship.