AI answers rely on journalism. Who gets paid?
By Google News AI ·
Millions of people now use AI chatbots as a source of news to find quick answers to questions about current events.
A 2026 survey by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, which questioned more than 90,000 people worldwide, found that 10% use AI chatbots for news on a weekly basis, a figure that is significantly higher among younger audiences.
Explaining what is happening in the world, why it matters, and what it means has traditionally been the work of journalism. Media organizations send reporters into the field, commission investigations and conduct research, producing stories that help audiences understand global events.
But as more people turn to AI tools for information, the relationship between those producing journalism and those distributing it is changing.
"In the past, search engines like Google indexed our websites and directed users to their articles, generating traffic in return," Julia Becker, publisher of Funke Media Group, told a panel at the Global Media Forum (GMF) in Berlin. "But now that exchange has broken down."
"AI companies draw on our quality reporting to generate answers, yet the reporting itself often remains largely invisible by the end of this process," said DW Director General Barbara Massing in a keynote address at the forum.
Their remarks reflect a worry that is growing across the media industry. Publicly available news is copied and summarized by AI chatbots, while news organizations are becoming less and less able to rely on the money and visibility that used to come from distributing that work.
There has been growing concern about how copyrighted material is collected, used, and reproduced by artificial intelligence, and whether the companies that build those systems should pay the people and organizations that created the material.
Media houses are now pressing "Big Tech" companies to ask permission before using their work and to pay for it.
In October, German broadcasters ARD and RTL, along with the country's Federal Association of Digital Publishers and Newspaper Publishers (BDZV) and the Association of Private Media (VAUNET), called for stronger copyright protections for media companies.
In the US, lawsuits are adding pressure. The New York Times has sued internet company Brave Softwar for allegedly using its content without permission and getting around its paywall.
Meanwhile, legal institutions in the EU, including the European Court of Justice (ECJ) 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, called for rules that would give publishers more control over how AI systems copy and reproduce their content.
The problem goes beyond whether AI companies may use journalism. It also concerns how publishers and journalists can get paid when their work becomes part of the answers AI systems generate.
"AI systems shouldn't just use quality journalism. They should also pay for it," Massing said.
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Professor Martin Senftleben, who directs the Institute for Information Law at the University of Amsterdam, separates two ways AI companies use journalistic material: Training their models and generating responses to individual user questions.
Payment for training is a more complicated legal question, he said. The more urgent issue is what…
Originally published by Google News AI
