FT CEO John Ridding says AI should pay the media outlets it trains on

FT CEO John Ridding advocated for AI platforms to compensate media organizations during a conference, emphasizing the need for stronger IP protections to support quality journalism.

John Ridding, CEO of Financial Times Group, left, and Park Chang-hee, CEO of JoongAng Ilbo, discuss the future of jounalism in a session of KPF Journalism Conference 2024 in central Seoul on Friday. [JEON MIN-KYU]

Media organizations should demand payment from AI platforms that use their content, and regulators must step up to safeguard the intellectual property rights of news publishers, according to Financial Times (FT) Group CEO John Ridding.

Outlets “should insist on payments, and it means it's rational and self-interested for AI platforms to pay,” Ridding said during the KPF Journalism Conference 2024 in central Seoul Friday.

“Regulators need to protect the rights of IP [intellectual property] owners, individual creators of IP and local news organizations,” he said. “I know it is a hard balance to strike between innovation and protection. But without sufficient protection for original journalism, the innovation will be based on faulty foundations, and no one benefits from that, least of all the consumers. We should, after all, be the center of IP and public policy.”

Ridding's speech was followed by a discussion session led by JoongAng Ilbo CEO Park Chang-hee, who addressed FT's digital strategy, the future of journalism, and the transformative impact AI will have on the industry.

Financial Times struck a deal with OpenAI in April to license its news contents to train AI models, positioning itself as an early mover in the industry to collaborate with a potential rival. The British news publication also relies on a robust revenue model from paid subscriptions.

Global news industry is navigating disruptions caused by AI including younger users turning to AI models for news summaries instead of reading full articles from news outlets. In Korea, in particular, the shift away from traditional news organizations is significant, with 53 percent of surveyed respondents now getting their news from YouTube — a nine percentage point increase from the previous year, according to a report from The Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism.

Ridding, however, sees leverage from news organizations in their ability to provide credible content, whereas AI platforms face issues with hallucination.

He cited a study by University of Oxford Professor Michael Wooldridge of computer science wherein the output of an AI model trained on AI-generated data “dissolved into nonsense” after few generations of training.

AI platforms compensating news organizations “is a significant and rare alignment toward reinforcing quality journalism,” according to Ridding.

In that sense, the chief executive commented that Naver, Korea's biggest search portal, should offer “the right terms of fees” to news organizations because “quality news need investments.”

Korea has a unique digital environment for news consumption wherein half the Korean population turns to Naver for news. While the portal compensates content providers, the fees are considered insufficient, especially as Naver does not provide rich first-party data.

Missing out on establishing genuine connections with readers is another major issue with the current ecosystem, Ridding points out, because it plays a second-to-none role in enhancing their engagement.

“If you don't have direct connections with the readers, you are always vulnerable,” he said.

Although FT has taken the lead in experimenting with AI in its newsroom, Ridding said it is doing so with much caution.

“We have very strict terms and conditions about our engagement with OpenAI in terms of the amount of FT text they can use in response, and we insist on links back to the original content so that readers can go back for veracity and the accuracy of what we've reported,” he said.

“At the same time, we do see quite significant and quite exciting areas of experimentation for the benefit of customers, for the benefit of readers and for the benefit of our own organizations.”

The introduction of AI into newsrooms has also created new roles, contrary to fears of job cuts.

“On the editorial side, we think of the opportunity to add resources, or redeploy resources, to work on what is potentially a really exciting new zone of journalism,” he said.

“Using AI as a research tool also requires people who know how to work with some of the powerful dimensions of research that AI can bring to bear, such as visual recognition, facial recognition, tracking patterns and data.”

KPF Journalism Conference 2024, organized by the Korea Press Foundation, took place three days from Wednesday to Friday at the Korea Press Center.

BY JIN EUN-SOO [jin.eunsoo@joongang.co.kr]