Should AI companies pay for the journalism they use?

At the Global Media Forum (GMF) in Berlin on November 5, hosted by German international broadcaster Deutsche Welle, media executives, legal experts and technology company representatives debated whether artificial intelligence (AI) companies should pay for the journalism that feeds chatbot answers. The question is gaining urgency as more people turn to AI tools for news.

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 weekly, with a significantly higher share among younger audiences.

Media: the old exchange has broken down

Julia Becker, publisher of Funke Media Group in Germany, told the forum that search engines such as Google used to index news sites and send readers to their articles, generating traffic, but that this exchange has broken down. Deutsche Welle Director General Barbara Massing said AI companies draw on quality reporting, yet the original source often stays largely invisible in the final answer.

In October, German broadcasters ARD and RTL, together with the publisher 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 its paywall. EU legal bodies, including the European Court of Justice, are examining whether AI-generated answers can themselves infringe copyright. In February, a coalition including The Guardian, the BBC and the Financial Times asked for rules giving publishers more control.

Possible payment models

Martin Senftleben, a professor at the University of Amsterdam who directs its Institute for Information Law, distinguished between training models and generating answers in real time. He considers the second issue more urgent and argued that existing EU law may already let publishers and journalists claim payment collectively. He proposed a mandatory system in which every AI response drawing on journalism triggers a payment, collected and distributed by a collecting organization, much like music royalties.

Google and concerns about regulation

Google's Lutz Mache said the company is willing to negotiate agreements with German media firms. Google is testing an "AI Contribution" pilot with selected publishers, though it is not yet a general payment system. Microsoft, Anthropic and OpenAI have said they back clearer signals that let website owners state whether content may be used for AI training.

Joerg Heidrich, a technology lawyer and AI commissioner at German media company Heise, warned that new rules could make it harder for European firms to compete and could hurt startups and researchers who rely on access to data.