The publishers attack Meta for illegal use of works by AI. PUB actors must support them, protect content, guarantee healthy traffic and promote equitable use of AI.
The French authors assign Meta in justice, who illegally uses their works to feed his AI tool. Information publishers, for their part, have sought to negotiate, without success with IA companies, and will undoubtedly undoubtedly undertake legal actions. Digital advertising actors must engage in this fight and support content publishers.
Michel Houellebeck or Patrick Modiano will they soon receive royalties paid by Meta? In any case, this is what several French publishers’ unions require, who have just suited the Mark Zuckerberg group to court. Reason: Meta illegally used the content of thousands of French books to train her AI, without warning the authors concerned, and without remunerating them. This unprecedented attack on the literary world against AI giants joins another: that which information publishers already lead, whose work is widely used to cause AI tools.
What do French media want? First, being able to refuse that their contents be used for free to cause AI models … and that their will be respected. Many media have already expressed this refusal, but that has not prevented indexing robots from continuing to collect their data. Then, they ask IA engines, when they resume their information, to quote it as sources, and to pay them.
For the time being, the least we can say is that discussions are skating: with the exception of the world and AFP, no French media has signed an agreement with an AI company. The 800 other titles of the French press, however, sought, via their unions, to negotiate with these AI manufacturers. Only one answered them: Open AI, the Cat GPT creator, refused any discussion, explaining that she could not see the interest. New legal actions are therefore being prepared.
Drop in traffic for information sites, due to the domination of AI tools
Information publishers, in this case, are not only fighting to make the use of their content remunerate: they are also faced with a drop in attendance at their sites, because users are satisfied with the information found thanks to AI, and no longer bother to go to the authors of this information. AI engines would thus send 96% less traffic on information sites than Google type search engines.
Getting your readers to be stripped of both their content and their readers is obviously a major problem for press publishers. And as if that were not enough, they must, moreover, face another danger: to receive more visits from robots who came to seek information for IA tools than “real” users. This change in the nature of their traffic presents a major risk: not only does it overload their servers, but can moreover bring them into the category of unreliable sites in the eyes of advertisers, and make them lose even more resources.
Support information publishers and identify illegal traffic from AI
No one has an interest in weakening information publishers: neither citizens, brands, nor even AI tools. All need to continue to have reliable information, produced by real teams of journalists, fairly paid for this work. This is why digital advertising brands and advertising agencies have a major role to play in this evolution. First, by supporting quality information media, and continuing to entrust their advertising budgets to them. In particular, when it comes to independent publishers, not having sufficient striking force to deal with AI companies. Then, by exercising a rigorous verification of the nature of the traffic received by these sites, so as not to put in the same basket the “false” traffic from robots and that generated by AI tools. Sophisticated verification tools exist to differentiate these types of traffic and detect the intrusion of AI. The advertising industry must seize these tools to continue to guarantee brands a safe exhibition, in quality environments.
No one disputes the indisputable AI contribution, nor the progress it represents for society as a whole. But the way IA tools today use publishers and their data remains unacceptable. To change the situation, only one solution: agencies, technological companies and regulators must work together, to lay the basics of a fair and beneficial operating mode for all.
