AI scraping has become its own media business |
AI scraping has become its own media business
A shadow industry of data middlemen is turning publishers’ work into fuel for AI agents—and forcing media companies to rethink what ‘outputs’ really mean
[Source Illustration: Getty Images]
Pete Pachal is a journalist and the creator of Media Copilot, a newsletter and podcast that examines how AI is changing media, journalism, and the news.
There are several dimensions to the ongoing legal war between the media industry and AI companies over copyright, and one of the major ones is the question of outputs. Which is to say: Scraping content without permission may be detestable, but if the party doing the scraping isn’t doing anything with it that would compete with the content creator, it’s difficult to prove harm. And many legal proceedings, especially civil claims, depend on showing the actions were harmful.
One of the earlier rulings in this area exemplifies the point. A group of authors, including comedienne Sarah........