AI firms must pay for journalism, urges UK policy report

A left-of-centre think tank has demanded that there be nutrition-style labelling of AI-generated news and that tech companies pay publishers for the use of their journalism in their systems, as AI is becoming an increasingly popular source for news.

In a recent report, the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) has stated that AI companies are quickly becoming the new gatekeepers of online information and that something needs to be done to ensure a healthy news environment in the age of AI.

The IPPR has called for labelling on AI-generated news answers to indicate what sources were used in the answers. This could include peer-reviewed articles and articles from professional news sources. The think tank has also called for the UK to create a licensing system whereby publishers can negotiate payment with AI companies for the use of their content.

Institute for Public Policy Research Senior Research Fellow Roa Powell said that if AI companies profit from journalism and influence public understanding, they must pay fairly and follow clear rules that protect trust, plurality and the long-term future of news.

The report suggests that the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) could play a key role, using its new powers over Google. This week, the CMA proposed allowing publishers to block Google from scraping their content for AI overviews, a move the IPPR says could form the basis of wider collective licensing deals.

According to the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, Google’s AI overviews now reach around two billion users each month, while roughly one in four people use AI tools to get information.

The IPPR also tested ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Google Gemini and Perplexity using 100 news-related queries. It found that licensing deals appeared to influence which publishers were cited, raising concerns that smaller and local outlets could be pushed aside.

The think tank points out that licensing could be a way of mitigating the loss of advertising revenue, but it is not a full solution. It recommends that public money should be used to support investigative and local journalism.