NYT, Economist among publishers joining coalition to curb unpaid AI use
NYT•The New York Times, Agence France-Presse and The Economist joined a coalition with more than 40 publishers seeking to prevent AI firms from using or profiting from their content without permission. The coalition has more than 80 members across over 20 countries.
1. Publishers join coalition
The New York Times, Agence France-Presse and The Economist joined more than 40 publishers in the Standards for Publisher Usage Rights coalition. Launched in February, SPUR now has more than 80 members across over 20 countries, including new members The Atlantic and Brazil's National Association of Newspapers.
2. Standards and legal action
SPUR is developing industry-wide standards and technical systems to help publishers track and control AI companies’ use of their content and facilitate licensing agreements. It recently introduced a Content Telemetry Standard designed to standardize how AI agents record and report their use of media content.
3. Traffic concerns
Publishers are also grappling with declining referral traffic as search engines introduce AI-generated answers. Google organic-search referrals to more than 2,500 websites fell 33% globally between November 2024 and November 2025, a Reuters Institute report said, citing Chartbeat data. USA Today and several newspapers it owns sued OpenAI earlier this month, alleging copyright infringement; OpenAI and Microsoft also face similar claims from authors and news organizations, including The New York Times.
