Forbes presents publishers’ concerns about AI

Randall Lane from Forbes Magazine | Gretchen A. Peck for E&P Magazine

Innovation is advancing rapidly in the technology world, particularly in the recent emerging field of artificial intelligence (AI). The introduction of dozens of generative AI tools in the past two years has created a dizzying dilemma for news media publishers about whether and how to use these tools themselves and how to protect their copyrighted products.

Randall Lane, chief content officer at Forbes Media and editor of Forbes magazine, wrote a column on June 11, 2024, titled “Why Perplexity’s cynical theft represents everything that can go wrong with AI,” referring to a dispute with major AI developer Perplexity. E&P reached out to Lane to better understand what happened and to get his advice for other news publishers grappling with the copyright-AI conflict. (Editor’s note: In E&P’s reporting, Dmitry Shevelenko, Perplexity’s chief business officer, responded to some of Forbes’ claims.)

E&P: How did you first become aware of the Perplexity article that boosted the reporting of Forbes journalists?

Randall Lane: On June 6, Forbes reporters Sarah Emerson and Rich Nieva published an exclusive story about former Google CEO Eric Schmidt’s secret drone project. We noticed that the story was generating a lot of buzz. We were tracking the story’s takeup when one of our reporters came across Perplexity’s story, which contained eerily similar wording, some completely copied fragments, and even an illustration from one of Forbes’ previous stories on Schmidt. Perplexity’s story neither mentioned nor referenced the Forbes article, which was clearly plagiarized. Perplexity then sent this cheap story to its subscribers via mobile push notification. An AI-generated podcast was created using the same (Forbes) reporting – without citing Forbes as the source. In response, our journalists published an article accusing Perplexity of hijacking content from news outlets, including Forbes.

E&P: The question I get asked most often by news media publishers is, “How can I be sure that our content is being used to train these AI engines?” Can you offer best practices for keeping track of how their content may be used in this way, usually without proper attribution and certainly without compensation?

Roadway: For media publishers who are unsure if their content is being stolen, I recommend that the technical team closely monitor the crawlers crawling their content – these can be identified by either user agents or IP addresses – and ensure that a process is in place to handle these if they are discovered.

As for Forbes, we’ve avoided this by telling some crawlers via robots.txt that we don’t want them to crawl our site. If one of them violates our policies, we take action to block it. However, some AI companies use third-party crawlers that are difficult to attribute. Some companies work to identify content used to train the LLMs. Another way to stay on top of things is to periodically ask for content that belongs to you.

In addition, we need to find a solution to enable fair coexistence for all parties involved. AI companies and news publishers need to work together, not against each other. Other AI companies have started to form partnerships with news publishers, but this is very different from duplicating content and proprietary journalism. Overall, coexistence in a new AI-driven world requires deeper conversations and mutually beneficial agreements between publishers and AI companies.

A lot of the consequences of that right now are the growing pains of a newer industry, artificial intelligence, and an industry that has been around for quite some time, media, both of which are learning to coexist and keep the journalism model alive.

E&P: Since publishing your June 11 column, have you encountered similar cases where your content has appeared in AI-authored articles or search summaries?

Roadway: While other AI companies train their models using our content, the difference between Perplexity and the other AI models is that Perplexity does not use our content to train. They essentially took our content and republished it almost in its entirety in response to a request. The two articles were not simply used as sources. I also think Perplexity was very aware of our stance on what they had done and that we thought it was morally and ethically wrong, so we have not yet seen them republish our content. I don’t think that has stopped them from trying the same tactic with other companies. Recently, Condé Nast accused Perplexity of plagiarism and sent the company a cease and desist letter. I think we will see more news publishers standing up to Perplexity as it continues to steal proprietary journalism while testing its aggregation product across the media industry.

E&P: Since publishing this column, have there been any further “discussions” or correspondence between you and Perplexity or any of the AI ​​platforms? If so, what was the content of those conversations?

Roadway: Our General Counsel has sent a letter to Perplexity’s CEO demanding that he remove our content, provide “satisfactory evidence and written assurances” that the infringing articles have been removed, and reimburse Forbes for any advertising revenue Perplexity has earned from the infringement.

Instead, the company’s CEO approached X with the issue, explaining that the incident was part of a new product feature that had “rough edges” and would be improved “with more feedback.” So they’re experimenting again, but when you experiment with a product that steals, that’s more than just a rough edge.

E&P: A few months ago we reporting about AI-powered search and how it promises to change the relationship between search users and news sources. One of the suggestions from our sources is that in anticipation of this impact, news media publishers should ensure they have better direct channels to readers/subscribers so they are even less reliant on search traffic referrals. Have you had similar conversations at Forbes and if so, what are some ways you can strengthen or build new direct relationships with your readers and subscribers?

Roadway: At Forbes, our mission is clear: to help our readers achieve greater success in the areas that matter most to them. To reach those readers, we’ve worked to build incredible franchises and communities, including ForbesBLK, Under 30, Over 50, Top Creators and more, that allow us to engage our readers and subscribers in ways that go beyond traditional media coverage or magazines. In doing so, we’re also building new direct relationships with our readers.

E&P: It seems to me this is another example of a vicious cycle for publishers, not unlike what we have experienced and continue to compete with platforms like Google and Meta. On the one hand, we rely on them to help us get our journalism off the ground, whether through search traffic or viral shares. And we have invested over a decade to improve our SEO results and build popular social media channels. And yet we also provide great value to these technology platforms. People use them, at least to some extent, to find and consume our content. However, only one side of this relationship is enriched, and news publishers have proposed through legislation and lawsuits that they share in that profit. Yet these efforts have so far been fruitless, and here we are again in a similar situation. What might we have learned from our relationship with search and social media channels about dealing with this new area of ​​AI?

Roadway: Like in that situation, there were growing pains as Google became the giant it is today, but again there was a balance, probably on Google’s side, but nonetheless there was a balance that helped both sides. We’re trying to find that now with AI and news publishers. As our CEO Mike Federle often points out, 2024 will be like 1994 when the first web browser came out. For many people it was their first introduction to the internet, and the following year it was integrated into everything and changed many lives. 2023 and 2024 were significant years for AI, with new AI companies being founded. I think the same thing will happen as with the web browser in 1994. It created a lot of opportunity and optimism, but like the web browser, there are also a lot of questions about how it will be adopted, what the downsides are, and how it will be applied.

E&P: There is a lot of debate going on among news media publishers right now about how to deal with the approaching AI bandwagon at large. On the one hand, publishers have taken legal action and filed lawsuits that, if successful, would either prohibit AI technology companies from “stealing” copyrighted materials or require them to compensate those publishers. The other approach is to enter into partnerships with those companies and sign licensing agreements (the terms of which are not publicly disclosed). What do you think of these two different approaches, and which one do you think will ultimately be the most effective and/or lucrative for news media publishers?

Roadway: As I said, while other companies have begun to form partnerships with news publishers, these are very new to the media landscape and will take time to balance out. These partnerships happen to be on the rise after this incident, and what they will look like remains to be seen. We also have to consider the time and value of original journalism. Hard work goes into stories like ours, from art design to reporting and editing, and they can cost thousands of dollars to produce, so it’s completely unfair when stories are essentially stolen.

As for legal recourse, we are seeing early precedents like the New York Times lawsuit against Microsoft and OpenAI. There are not many precedents or regulations on the relationship between news publishers and AI, so I think it is also necessary to take the initiative to start these legal conversations and file lawsuits to shape the norms and boundaries of this new dynamic. As for the most effective and lucrative solution for news publishers, litigation is not the best answer. When it comes to protecting our intellectual property rights against AI companies (especially the giants), publishers have no choice. If the AI ​​companies continue to use our content without permission, we will be left with no alternative but litigation. We are at a critical turning point, and how we handle this will have far-reaching implications for journalism.

Gretchen A. Peck is an editor at Editor & Publisher. She has been reporting for E&P since 2010 and welcomes comments at [email protected].