Media Industry Presses AI Companies to Pay for the Journalism They Use
At the Global Media Forum in Berlin, publishers, legal experts and tech representatives debated who should pay for news content used by AI chatbots. Media leaders say chatbots draw on their reporting while traffic and revenue decline.
Publishers, legal experts and technology company representatives gathered at the Global Media Forum (GMF) in Berlin to discuss whether and how artificial intelligence (AI) companies should pay for the journalism their chatbots use. The question is gaining urgency as more people turn to AI tools for news while media outlets lose the visits and income that distribution once brought.
A 2026 survey by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, covering more than 90,000 people worldwide, found that 10% use AI chatbots for news every week. The figure is significantly higher among younger audiences.
Concerns from the media
Julia Becker, publisher of Funke Media Group, said search engines such as Google used to index news websites and send readers to articles, but that exchange has broken down. Barbara Massing, Director General of German international broadcaster Deutsche Welle, said AI companies draw on quality reporting to generate answers, while the reporting itself often remains largely invisible. She argued that AI systems should pay for such content.
In October, German broadcasters ARD and RTL, together with industry associations BDZV and VAUNET, called for stronger copyright protection. In the US, The New York Times has sued Brave Software, alleging it used content without permission and bypassed the paywall. EU legal bodies, including the European Court of Justice, are examining whether AI-generated answers can themselves infringe copyright. In February, a coalition of media organizations including the Guardian, the BBC and the Financial Times demanded rules giving publishers more control.
Payment models
Professor Martin Senftleben, director of the Institute for Information Law at the University of Amsterdam, said payment for training is a more complicated legal question, while the more urgent issue is journalism used to answer questions in real time. He proposed a legally required system in which every AI response drawing on journalism triggers a payment, with a collecting organization distributing the money, similar to music royalties.
Lutz Mache of Google said the company is willing to negotiate with German media companies. Google is testing an "AI Contribution" pilot with selected publishers, but it is still an early experiment rather than a general payment system. Jörg Heidrich, a technology lawyer and AI commissioner at media company Heise, warned that additional regulation could make it harder for European firms to compete and could harm startups and researchers.
