AI chatbots try to get to articles behind paywalls, and they do it the same way humans would: they search the web and social media for copies and excerpts, then piece it together. The difference is they can do it way faster, which raises the question of whether these bots should be allowed to do this at all. (Henk van Ess, Digital Digging)
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AI-powered news app Particle expands into Long Reads, teaming up with The Atlantic.
You shall not pass… unless you pay: Cloudflare has launched a private beta enabling customers to allow, charge, or block bot-access to their content. For it to work, bot operators such as OpenAI or Google would have to use a new protocol named Web Bot Auth and be willing to pay.
Initial US rulings, as expected, give AI training the green light. Some lawsuits against AI companies have been dismissed, with courts distinguishing between AI training (legal) and traditional piracy (still illegal). (Florent Daudens, HuggingFace)
Another fun one: Cloudflare CEO warns of AI-driven “existential threat” to publishers as search traffic dwindles amid bot-fueled content skimming. (Christine Wang, Axios)
Yes to deals, payments, and control: Meredith Levien, CEO of The New York Times, talks about the Amazon-deal. She likes to think of Times journalism as “IP”, not “data”. (Adweek, soon on the Mixed Signals podcast from Semafor)
The rise of retrieval bots raises questions about data ownership, monetization, and the future of the open web. (Nitasha Tiku, Washington Post)
The OpenAI-suing New York Times is entering into a multi-year partnership with Amazon, with content appearing on Alexa and going into AI training. (Jaspreet Singh, Reuters)
Judicial panel overrides author preferences, bundles diverse copyright claims against AI companies into single NY proceeding. (Ella Creamer, The Guardian)
OpenAI’s latest Ghibli meme trend brazenly exploits Miyazaki’s longstanding criticism of AI. (Brian Merchant, Blood in the Machine)
Preparing a feast only to have it eaten by ghosts who don’t leave a tip: Wikipedia plans to regulate bot access and wants new attribution guidelines for web, apps, voice assistants, and LLMs. (Wikimedia)
No Permission, no pay: How my Book became AI training fodder
I was at the Leipziger Buchmesse (Leipzig Book Fair) to talk about AI. First off: I was robbed. Supposedly, Meta (and probably others) trained its AI using LibGen, a shadow library with millions of books and articles. A book that Christian Stoecker, Konrad Lischka and I wrote 13 years ago is part of the LibGen...
