Five major British broadcasters and news organisations have formed a coalition to push for a common AI standard to enable fair use of their output.
The founding members – the Financial Times, The Guardian, the Daily Telegraph, the BBC, and Sky News – are calling on other media leaders to join in and develop shared protocols to "protect original journalism" and respond to a "global challenge".
The alliance, called the Standards for Publisher Usage Rights coalition (SPUR), has published an open letter to “fellow leaders in global media” that says: “We believe we need to come together to protect original journalism and secure the long-term sustainability of our industry.”
The letter says that: "Across the industry, our reporting, our archives, our original content, have become foundational training material for AI systems.
"This material has been scraped, copied, and reused with no common standards to enable permission or payment, weakening the economic model that supports journalism.
“The lack of transparency about how AI answers are created risks eroding public trust in both the news and the technologies used to access it.”
The SPUR says it aims to establish shared technical standards and responsible licensing frameworks that ensure AI developers can access high-quality, reliable journalism in legitimate, responsible, and convenient ways, while guaranteeing that publishers retain practical control of their content and receive fair value when it is used.
The coalition says it will: develop shared industry standards, creating responsible ways for original journalism to be used sustainably; reduce friction in licensing and bridge the gap between publishers and AI developers; identify gaps in the technical tools needed to protect intellectual property, and support their creation; ensure high-value content can be accessed through rights-cleared, accountable channels; evaluate existing industry infrastructure and assess where new technologies or approaches are needed; enable transparent, scalable use of journalistic content.
Olivier Barnich, Head of Innovation and Architecture in the R&D department of EVS, Kyle Suess, Co-Founder of Amira Labs, and Chris Abbot, CuePilot Specialist at CuePilot, recently took part in an IBC365 Accelerating Innovation podcast episode to discuss how they built an ecosystem of AI-driven production agents for Champions ITN, BBC, and Channel 4. Discover more here.
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