The hidden cost of AI content use

Publishers are facing a growing dilemma as AI companies increasingly demand content while licensing deals slow down. OpenAI, Meta, Amazon, and others have been signing such agreements, but the process has stalled for many publishers. Digiday’s London event highlighted concerns, with one executive noting a slowdown in discussions with AI firms. Katya Gorchinskaya, a Ukrainian journalist and media consultant, also reported that the market for such deals is effectively closed. Meanwhile, AI demand for content continues to rise. Jonathan Roberts, chief innovation officer at People Inc., revealed that tens of thousands of bots scrape content from the company’s media properties daily, with only 38 allowed. Fiona Spooner, Financial Times’ managing director of consumer revenue, noted one trial account accessed a million articles in eight hours from 700,000 IP addresses. Industry experts are pushing for metered pricing, where content providers are paid based on usage. TollBit pioneered a pay-per-crawl model, now used by over 7,000 publishers. Cloudflare recently shifted to a pay-per-use model, partnering with Ceramic.ai and You.com. Google and Microsoft are also testing similar approaches. Cloudflare’s program is still in beta, but it aims to notify publishers when their content is requested, allowing them to accept, decline, or negotiate.