AI systems are cannibalizing the content they depend on to function, and the fledgling AI content market designed to solve the problem is doomed to fail unless it fixes three major structural flaws. That’s the warning from a first-of-its-kind report from the Open Markets Institute’s Center for Journalism and Liberty.
“Same Gatekeepers, New Tollbooths: Mapping the AI Content Licensing Market” by Dr. Courtney Radsch and Karina Montoya is the first comprehensive analysis of how AI companies source, value, and compensate the news and creative content their systems rely on. As use of AI is leading to a collapse in traffic and revenue to original sources, the report finds that the current system of copyright claims, ad hoc deals, and voluntary commitments to address this is repeating the same mistakes as the social media and search era. Unless the industry acts now, the result will be ever-worsening “sloppification” – a slow but accelerating degradation of AI’s own outputs as the supply of quality, human-created content dries up.
Read the full report by the Center for Journalism and Liberty here.