The session titled “News publishing and Artificial intelligence risk or opportunity?” was held in the middle of the week-long Permanent Committee on Copyright and Related Rights that WIPO organises twice a year. It was opened by WAN-IFRA’s Elena Perotti, who provided a global overview of the issues, focusing on the risk of disintermediation and the unquestionable need of AI Systems for professional quality news content in all languages.

Mr James Hodge, Chief Economist and Acting Deputy Commissioner at the South African Competition Commission, brought to the audience the findings on AI of the extremely well researched study recently published by the Commission. The provisional report, stemming from a 16-month media and digital platforms market inquiry, recommends a series of remedies in defence of the South African news media that span from a collective negotiation exception, to transparency obligations to hefty levies should agreements not be reached.

The international legal framework was illustrated by Isabella Splendore, Head of Legal and International Affairs at the Italian Federation of Newspapers and Magazine Publishers FIEG. Splendore delved into the different approaches of the EU compared to the US, and analysed in detail the implications of the pivotal decision Thomson Reuters vs Ross Intelligence and its reject of a fair use defence in the trining of an LLM with copyrighted materials.

The session was concluded by Martín Etchevers, President of the Association of Argentine Journalistic Entities (ADEPA). Etchevers proposed a roadmap in three steps to ensure fair compensation to the media: first, establish global agreements that include both large and small and medium-sized media. Secondly, initiate legal action if the AI companies do not agree to pay for the use of journalistic content. And finally, move towards updating laws and regulations to protect information production in a changing technological environment.