In addition, generative AI threatens to commodify many types of information. Once it has trained its models on the content it gets from AP and Axel Springer, OpenAI will have less need of further news archives.

This seriously limits the compensation that each publisher will be able to negotiate, as well as the number of bilateral deals the AI companies will be willing to reach.

SHARING THE SPOILS

All this makes a return to the negotiating table before a court showdown the most likely outcome. Generative AI promises to create big new markets for media content: The question, as always, is how the spoils should be shared.

The media companies hope to reap value from the technology directly, training AI models on their archives and summarising their news content to enhance their own services. But judging from the large audience ChatGPT generated in its first months, smart chatbots and other AI-powered services look set to become huge media sites themselves.

Axel Springer stands to make “tens of millions of euros” a year from its OpenAI agreement. For a transformative technology that could upend much of the media business, that may not be much.

Even a payment of €40 million (US$44.3 million) would still only add around 1 per cent to Springer’s revenue each year. In return, the news groups risk surrendering their audience to the AI companies. They could also see the value of their brands diluted if ChatGPT and its successors become the new oracles of the internet.

With generative AI still in its infancy, it is impossible to envisage exactly what new services it will lead to, or how valuable these will become. That, more than anything, makes it hard for media companies to agree terms that trade away their future rights.

But as generative AI catches on with more internet users, the pressure to reach a deal will only increase.