Washington Monthly Institute Tackles AI's Threat to Journalism
The Washington Monthly launched a new in-house think tank this week and published its first research report on how artificial intelligence companies have been using journalists' work without compensation to train their models.
The report, titled "AI and the Future of Independent Journalism: The promise and peril of privately controlled data marketplaces for media content," examines how predatory business practices and weak policy have turned AI into an existential threat for news organizations.
The Core Problem
AI companies train their systems on journalists' reporting while offering little or no payment. Meanwhile, AI-generated news summaries pull readers away from original stories. Small, local, and independent publications face the greatest risk - they lack the resources to sue or negotiate with Big Tech.
Federal policymakers have proposed numerous solutions, but none have been implemented or provided meaningful relief to journalists and content creators.
A Potential Technical Fix
The report identifies a technology that could help rebalance the power dynamic. Cloudflare, which manages roughly 20 percent of global web traffic, now makes it harder for AI companies to scrape content from websites without permission or payment.
With proper government regulation, such tools could give news outlets a way to control how their work is used and ensure they get paid for it.
Who Wrote This
The report was written by Courtney C. Radsch, director of the Center for Journalism & Liberty at Open Markets Institute. Phillip Longman, a senior editor at the Washington Monthly, edited the work.
The Lumina Foundation supported the project.
Writers and journalists working with AI should understand both the technical details of how AI models are trained and the policy questions surrounding their use. For those in the profession, courses on AI for writers cover practical strategies for protecting work in an AI-driven media environment.
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