When Google became the dominant search engine around 2004, not everyone was happy. Everyone from book publishers to music studios blasted the company for helping itself to copyrighted content without paying. The search giant eventually smoothed things over but now, twenty years later, Google has become the media industry's villain all over again-this time for gobbling that same content to train its AI tools.
The idea behind RSL is brutally simple. Instead of the old file -- which only said, "yes, you can crawl me," or "no, you can't," and which AI companies often ignore -- publishers can now add something new: machine-readable licensing terms. Want an attribution? You can demand it. Want payment every time an AI crawler ingests your work, or even every time it spits out an answer powered by your article?
Digital publishers are in a losing battle against Big Tech and AI for traffic and ad revenue. But the IAB Tech Lab has a plan to swing the momentum back in pubs' favor. On Tuesday, the Tech Lab announced a new publisher-focused working group that aims to ensure pubs are fairly compensated when AI scrapes their content for training. IAB Tech Lab CEO Anthony Katsur previewed the new initiative at AdMonsters' Sell Side Summit in Nashville, Tenn., on Monday.