The journalists’ revolt against AI scraping

The article argues that major AI developers like OpenAI and Anthropic rely on the unauthorized scraping of copyrighted journalistic content to train their models, constituting copyright infringement and unfair competition. By using proprietary news data without compensation, these firms undermine the economic viability of media outlets, which are already struggling from the digital shift. This practice allows AI to replicate high-quality content directly, reducing the need for users to visit original news sites. This dynamic exacerbates the crisis in journalism by diverting traffic and ad revenue away from publishers to tech giants. The author highlights that AI systems can bypass paywalls and serve as substitutes for news consumption, effectively stealing the value created by journalists. Unlike search engines that historically drove traffic to publishers, current AI models often keep users within closed ecosystems, further entrenching the oligopolistic power of big tech and preventing the development of sustainable business models for the news industry. The relevance to open data lies in the tension between the AI industry’s claim that publicly available information is free to use for training and the legal and ethical rights of data creators. The article underscores that “open” access does not equate to unrestricted commercial exploitation, particularly when it harms the producers of that data. It calls for accountability and fair licensing, illustrating how unchecked data harvesting can destabilize information ecosystems and threatens the sustainability of independent journalism, which is essential for a functioning democracy.

Source: taipeitimes.com
Published on 2026-10-14

The journalists’ revolt against AI scraping

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