The AI industry’s pursuit of licensable content has been fraught with lawsuits and accusations of copyright infringement. Now, as tech companies look for legally secure sources of AI training data, Amazon is reportedly considering launching a marketplace where publishers can license their content directly to AI companies.
The Information reported on Monday that the e-commerce giant was meeting with publishing executives to warn them about its plans to launch such a marketplace. Ahead of Tuesday’s AWS conference for publishers, Amazon “distributed slides mentioning content marketplaces,” the magazine writes.
In an interview with TechCrunch, an Amazon spokesperson did not deny the story, but also did not directly address future marketplaces, saying only, “Amazon has long-term, innovative relationships with publishers across many areas of our business, including AWS, retail, advertising, AGI, and Alexa. We are always innovating together to best serve our customers, but we have nothing specific to share on this topic at this time.”
Amazon wouldn’t be the first major tech company to take this path. Microsoft recently launched something called the Publisher Content Marketplace (PCM), which the company says will provide “a new revenue stream” for publishers, while also giving AI systems “scaled-up access to premium content.” Microsoft added that PCM was designed to “give publishers a transparent economic framework for content licensing.”
The move is a logical next step for the AI industry, which is already seeking to resolve the legally murky question of how copyrighted material is included in AI training data by signing deals with major news organizations and media organizations. For example, OpenAI already has content licensing partnerships with The Associated Press, Vox Media, News Corp, The Atlantic, and more.
These efforts were not enough to stem the legal consequences. Disputes over copyright in AI algorithms have led to a monsoon of lawsuits, and the issue is still being resolved by the judicial system. New regulatory strategies are constantly being proposed to address this issue.
Media publishers are also concerned about the potential for AI summaries, particularly those that Google displays in search results, to reduce traffic to their sites. One recent study claimed that such summaries have a “devastating” impact on the number of users clicking through to a website. The Information report notes that as the use of AI continues to expand, publishers may see new marketplace-based content sharing systems as “a more sustainable business and revenue booster (than current more limited licensing partnerships)”.
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