• by Ray Schultz , August 10, 2023

A group of 10 organizations, including The Associated Press and Gannett, is calling for a legal framework to protect journalism from unregulated AI use.

In an open letter titled, “Preserving public trust in media through unified AI regulation and practices,” the signees advocate regulatory and industry action to ensure:

• Transparency about the makeup of training sets used to create AI models.
• Consent of intellectual property rights holders on copying of their content in training data.
• Ability of media companies to collectively negotiate with AI model developers about use of their intellectual property.  
• Requiring that generative AI models identify AI-generated content.  
• Mandating that generative AI model providers eliminate bias and misinformation.

The group argues that AI, if left unchecked, “can threaten the sustainability of the media ecosystem as a whole by significantly eroding the public’s trust in the independence and quality of content and threatening the financial viability of its creators.”

The letter also contends that AI models can disseminate content “often without any consideration of, remuneration to, or attribution to the original creators.”

The open letter was signed by:

• Agence France-Presse 
• European Pressphoto Agency 
• European Publishers’ Council 
• Gannett | USA TODAY Network 
• Getty Images 
• National Press Photographers Association 
• National Writers Union 
• News Media Alliance 
• The Associated Press 
• The Authors Guild