The media mogul is working on a syndicate of big publishers including the NYT that will pressure AI companies into huge payments for training data one way or another.
Payments on the scale the publishers expect would mark a dramatic change for companies like Google, which have built high-margin business in large part because they — unlike media companies from Netflix to Comcast — don’t pay for content.
Unless the publishers lower their expectations, or the tech companies adjust their fundamental sense of what it is to be a platform, this high stakes conflict is likely to escalate.
I will remind you that anyone who confidently predicts how a fair use AI copyright case will play out is getting paid by one side or another — fair use cases, even on largely similar facts, are a coin flip every time, and they’re getting weirder not simpler.
