In October, Dow Jones filed a lawsuit against generative AI startup Perplexity. The publisher accused the AI search engine of “massively illegally copying the publisher’s copyrighted works.” The allegations echoed similar accusations by Forbes magazine and the New York Post earlier this year.
Perplexity’s reaction was swift and negative. “[Dow Jones]wants to live in a world where published facts are owned by corporations and no one can do anything about them unless they pay a fee,” the company said in a statement. Ta. “That’s not our worldview.”
Perplexity’s statement makes it seem as if negotiating licensing rights for generative AI with hundreds, if not thousands, of news publishers is unduly burdensome. But the Dow Jones-owned research tool has done just that by negotiating its own AI licensing agreement for its unique AI search capabilities.
Last month, Factiva announced that it had signed agreements with approximately 4,000 publishers around the world to use its generative AI. The agreement concerns a business intelligence platform and news database that stores transcripts of articles from online media, newspapers, magazines, and radio programs. The Associated Press, The Washington Post and Swiss news agency AWP Finanznachrichten are among the thousands of publishers that have signed the agreement. Dow Jones news brands including The Wall Street Journal, Barron’s and MarketWatch also signed on.
“We have literally visited every publisher within Factiva and are still negotiating,” said Tracy Mabry, general manager of Factiva. “We are adding Gen AI rights to the new contract and adding the contract to the one publishers have already signed.”
The announcement coincides with the launch of Factiva, a new search feature that provides short AI-generated summaries in response to search results, in line with Google’s AI Overview and Perplexity’s own AI search engine.
Factiva’s search results include direct links to the original articles cited, and publishers who sign on are compensated when their articles surface. The performance of licensors that have not signed an AI agreement will not appear in the summary.
Factiva is not built for the average search user or news reader. The subscription platform is aimed at professionals in finance, academia, government, and business. AI search and summarization tools are used by teams conducting due diligence investigations and analysts creating reports. Still, the sheer number of deals Dow Jones has negotiated and the number of publishers that have agreed to them is striking.
Last month, The Intercept’s copyright lawsuit against OpenAI moved to the discovery stage. The Atlantic revealed that subtitles from Hollywood movies and TV shows are being used to train AI models owned by Anthropic, Meta, Nvidia, and Apple. The New York Times then sent Perplexity a “cease and desist” letter asking it to stop unauthorized use of the content.
At a time when the limits of copyright for news publishers are being tested, Dow Jones said it is planting a flag in the ground and setting a precedent with its deal with Factiva.
“We are a publisher and we have journalists,” Mabry said, noting that he would expect similar direct recognition and compensation if Dow Jones publications were used in AI-generated summaries. “Our journalists make every effort to report the news accurately and fairly. Their work should be recognized, valued and licensed accordingly, and so should the entire industry. We believe that, for us, it is very personal.”
To date, the roster of publishers who have signed the AI agreement operates in 160 countries and publishes in 29 languages. Mabry said Factiva continues to negotiate a new agreement. “We want to be truly global and empower each of our professional customers to speak, be present and get content from where they are,” she said.
The negotiations clearly benefited from the trust that had been established. Many of the agreements are with existing licensors, and Factiva has been paying publishers and working with licensing teams for the past 25 years.
“We give very detailed presentations about what we do, how our generative AI solutions work, and where that information appears. We strive to be transparent so they know they can trust us with their data,” Mabry said.
Mabry said Factiva not only seeks explicit permission from publishers to use their content in AI-generated summaries, but also pays publishers directly.
Factiva’s more standard compensation model is built around when individual articles are accessed in search results. Mabry said her team is researching and developing “deeper analytics” as it expands its suite of generative AI tools. These metrics can capture when original reports extracted from articles appear. “We are in the world of generative AI, so we know we need to bring moments of loyalty to chunks of data,” she said.
Courtesy of Factiva.
