Major news publishers join global coalition to stop unpaid use of content by AI firms

The New York Times, Agence France-Presse and The Economist joined more than 40 publishers in a coalition to stop artificial intelligence companies from using or making money from their content without permission.

Coalition Growth

The Standards for Publisher Usage Rights coalition started in February and now has more than 80 members across over 20 countries. New members include The Atlantic and Brazil's National Association of Newspapers. They join founding members like the Financial Times, BBC and Associated Press. The group relies entirely on funding from its members.

Legal Battles

Publishers are stepping up legal steps to keep AI firms from using their work without permission to train large language models. USA Today and several papers it owns sued OpenAI earlier this month for copyright infringement. OpenAI and Microsoft also face similar lawsuits from authors and news groups, including the New York Times. Meanwhile, Google search referrals to more than 2,500 websites dropped globally between November 2024 and November 2025 according to a Reuters Institute report citing Chartbeat data, as search engines show AI answers that keep users from clicking through to websites.

Tech Standards

SPUR is building industry rules and technical systems to help publishers track and control how AI companies use their material and set up licensing deals. Rebecca Grossman-Cohen, who is the New York Times head of strategic partnerships and chief of staff, said that protecting intellectual property and pushing technology forward must happen together. The coalition recently launched a Content Telemetry Standard to make it standard for AI agents to record and report how they use media content so creators get paid.

Context

News organisations across the world are facing major financial pressure as readers shift to AI search summaries instead of visiting news websites directly. This coalition represents a growing push by media houses to protect their original reporting and demand payment from tech companies that use their content.