Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) is holding hearings on artificial intelligence. (Matt McClain/The Washington Post)
Lawmakers on Capitol Hill have tried for years to pass legislation to give news outlets more bargaining power against the tech giants, warning that their dominance over digital ads is decimating the industry - most of all, local news.
But at a hearing Wednesday, senators zeroed in on how a new perceived threat could hurt the news industry: the rise of generative artificial intelligence.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), whose subcommittee held the session on AI and journalism, said declining news revenue and technological changes are creating a “perfect storm” that is “accelerating and expanding the destruction of local reporting.”
AI could pose a dual threat to outlets, with developers seizing on their work to train AI models “without compensation or credit” while enabling the creation of lightly staffed news sources to compete with them, he warned.
Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), who has proposed legislation to let news organizations band together during negotiations with the tech giants, said she was “very concerned” that the decline of local news would “only worsen with the rise of generative AI.”
The session took place during a critical time in the debate.
The New York Times last month sued OpenAI and Microsoft over their alleged use of its copyright articles to train their AI systems. It marked the latest in lawsuits accusing tech companies of violating content creators’ intellectual property.
The cases, as The Washington Post’s Will Oremus and Elahe Izadi wrote last week, “have the potential to rattle the foundations of the booming generative AI industry.”
OpenAI fired back in a blog post Monday, calling the Times lawsuit “without merit” and arguing that its use of “publicly available internet materials” to train its products was protected under a legal principle known as “fair use.”
The ChatGPT maker also accused the Times of “not telling the full story,” saying the two companies had been engaged in “negotiations focused on a high-value partnership” as recently as December to display and attribute the publication in OpenAI’s products.
While the courts consider those legal challenges, some news outlets are moving ahead and partnering with AI developers, including local news organizations.
Politico parent company Axel Springer in December announced a deal for OpenAI to display “summaries of selected global news content” from the outlet in ChatGPT. Financial terms were not disclosed, but the Times reported that the deal netted the German media giant more than $10 million. (Disclosure: Cristiano Lima-Strong previously worked for Politico.) The Associated Press unveiled a similar news-sharing deal back in July.
OpenAI last year also struck a $5 million deal with the American Journalism Project to support efforts by local publications to experiment with AI tools.
Some news organizations, meanwhile, are leaning on the tools in an attempt to fill gaps in their local coverage. News Corp., parent company of the Wall Street Journal and Fox News, has said it is producing thousands of weekly local news stories in Australia using generative AI. Small outlets that rely heavily on generative AI to produce content have popped up in recent months, including around Boston.
Blumenthal argued that while there’s major potential in using AI to augment journalism, it should not “replace” members of the press, especially locally.
“It’s never a substitute for local reporters in local newsrooms, broadcasters, journalists who reflect their community and talk to their neighbors,” Blumenthal said.
