Remuneration for AI Training: A New Source of Income for Journalists?

Generative AI systems threaten to usurp the market for human press and media productions. To enable journalists to act as ‘watchdogs’, highlight societal problems, and prompt necessary changes, remuneration rules should offer support for quality journalistic work by humans. In the EU, the rights reservation option following from Article 4(3) of the 2019 Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market – now flanked by the provisions of the AI Act – could support a remuneration system focusing on the use of human journalistic content for AI training. While AI training income would benefit media companies that own large repertoires of journalistic work, individual journalists might not receive an appropriate revenue share. This chapter suggests introducing a general output-based payment obligation on all providers and users of generative AI systems involved in media productions: both companies offering generative AI systems and companies using these systems in the media sector. Mandatory collective rights management could ensure payment directly to individual journalists, as in the repartitioning schemes of collecting societies. The remuneration could also finance funds that improve journalists’ working and living conditions. When distributing AI remuneration, social and cultural institutions could prioritise public interest journalism as a countermeasure to AI-generated misinformation and disinformation.