Generative artificial intelligence is pushing the news business to the breaking point. AI summaries from the likes of Google, Microsoft, OpenAI and others are diverting revenue from news publishers, leading to fewer click-throughs, less advertising revenue and fewer subscriptions.
Staffers at Microsoft and OpenAI knew that scraping news websites to train their AI models could damage or even destroy those publications, according to court documents in a high-profile copyright infringement lawsuit filed by the New York Times. (See articles below.)
An OpenAI executive referred to an “existential threat” to publishers and a Microsoft executive said AI content scraping had started a “doom loop” for the news business, according to reports this week.
From a consumer perspective, the AI summaries are enticing. They give users the answers they are looking for instead of weblinks to full articles to read. Also, many publications have pay walls that provide friction for the casual web surfer but that AI systems have managed to bypass.
AI model builders must coordinate with news publishers and compensate them for their work. Otherwise, they could end up killing the valuable sources of information that they rely on for their answer engines.
Related articles:
Tech Companies’ Staff Knew Their AI Tools Posed ‘Existential Threat’ to Publishers (The Wall Street Journal; Sept. 17, 2026)
Microsoft and OpenAI Workers Worry About ‘Largest Theft of Labor’ in History (The New York Times; Sept. 17, 2026)
OpenAI, Microsoft executives' quotes on AI training threaten copyright defense, news outlets argue (Reuters; Sept. 17, 2026)
Google rolls out pay-per-value AI licensing program to publishers (Digiday; Sept. 14, 2026)
Ziff Davis CEO: if OpenAI can find $750 billion for data centers, it can find money for publishers, too (Fortune; Sept. 14, 2026)
Photo: AI artwork produced with prompts on Google Gemini.
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