Media must fight against AI abuse

(CLO) Thomson Reuters President Steve Hasker said news producers could go bankrupt if they allow Big Tech to use AI to gain free access to their content, just as they allowed Google and Facebook to do so years ago.

Speaking at the Thomson Reuters Foundation Annual Conference, Mr Hasker said news publishers had made the mistake in the past of providing free news content to social media giants, thinking it would “draw attention” to their sites.

“Well, it didn’t work that way. What really happened is that tech companies got really good at not paying for content and keeping attention,” Hasker said at the conference, noting that this nearly destroyed the news industry.

“So I'm going to be a naive optimist and say that at some point, we, as the news industry, learned a lesson.”

Illustration: GI

Hasker, who is also CEO of Thomson Reuters, said that when AI is deployed, it remains to be seen whether the news industry will be able to protect its interests against wealthy social media companies.

And if we don't, and if we naively believe that "model providers will do the right thing with our content and we'll ultimately benefit from that, I think that will be the downfall of this industry."

He noted that the New York Times has sued OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement for using the newspaper’s content to train generative AI. He said Reuters has made several commercial deals to license content for large language models used for AI.

Mr Hasker also called for clear labelling of news content to show whether it is a factual or opinion, the source of that opinion, and whether it was generated by AI or by a journalist.

Hasker said consumers like to hear things that reinforce their existing beliefs, as well as their biases and prejudices. The problem of misinformation and fake news will persist unless material is labeled to indicate its source.

But another council member, journalist and Nobel Peace Prize winner Maria Ressa, objected to labeling it as a solution.

“Even if you label things, if it's part of the design of the tech platforms to manipulate us... and exploit our fear, anger and hatred to polarize us because that makes more money, then whatever journalists do is really going to be for naught.”

Hoang Hai (according to The Baron)

Source: https://www.congluan.vn/chu-tich-reuters-truyen-thong-phai-chong-lai-viec-lam-dung-cua-ai-de-ton-tai-post318788.html