Meta Negotiates Licensing Deals with Publishers to Fuel AI Development

Tech giant Meta is locking horns with news publishers—hammering out licensing agreements to train its AI models on premium content. This move signals a strategic pivot toward legitimizing data sourcing for artificial intelligence tools.

Behind the Scenes: High-Stakes Negotiations

Meta's push for licensed news content aims to dodge legal pitfalls while supercharging its AI capabilities. Publishers, meanwhile, see dollar signs—or maybe just pennies, given tech's history of underpaying for content.

Why It Matters: AI's Hunger for Data

Quality training data remains the lifeblood of AI development. By securing licensed news, Meta avoids scraping low-grade web content—a common but messy practice in the industry.

The Finance Angle: Another 'Value Capture' Play

Wall Street will likely cheer this as 'prudent risk management'—ignoring that it's basically monetizing others' work while sidestepping copyright lawsuits. Classic tech playbook: privatize the profits, socialize the liabilities.

The changing operations of tech firms like Meta

The reduced prominence resulted in sharp falls in traffic of referrals for many publishers, but some have said they are seeing a modest rebound in visits from Facebook although they are still below pre-Covid peaks.

The rise of AI has shaken up the publishing business yet again. Tech companies have been scraping websites to feed their large language models, while new search tools powered by those models have begun diverting readers away from traditional news outlets.

Some publishers have tried to push back by blocking AI crawlers from trawling their sites unless compensation is paid. One of the largest providers of web security, Cloudflare, has changed its default settings to prevent unpaid scraping.

Reports say it is against this MOVE that Meta has decided to pay for licensed material, and last October, it struck a deal with Reuters. However, discussions with other publishers only broadened in previous months.

A spokesperson for Axel Springer declined to comment. Meta, Fox and News Corp did not respond to requests for comment.

The move also comes as AI firms and news publishers have been at each other’s throats over copyright infringement and plagiarism. The recent case involves Perplexity, where Encyclopedia Britannica and Merriam-Webster are suing the AI firm on allegations of copyright and trademark infringement.

The publishers, as previously reported by Cryptopolitan are claiming that Perplexity’s “answers engine” plagiarizes their content and diverts web traffic, as well as misleading users with inaccurate outputs.

Tech rivals are also gearing up

The challenge is not affecting Meta alone but is prevalent across AI firms. OpenAI has already penned agreements with publishers including News Corp, Axel Springer, and Dotdash Meredith, which owns the People magazine.

Earlier this year, Amazon also signed a contract with the New York Times allowing its Alexa voice assistant to draw directly from the paper’s journalism.

In the meantime, Google has started adding AI features to its research engine which shows the sources used in an effort meant to credit publishers and deflect criticism over using content without permission.

Observers opine that Meta’s move is not surprising given the surge in AI chatbots, and therefore the need for reliable and up-to-date news content to remain competitive.

“The company wants its AI products to feel relevant to what’s happening in the world,” said one person familiar with the talks.

The push also comes as Meta reshapes its research efforts under the banner of Superintelligence Labs, after the company experienced an exodus of senior staff as well as muted reaction to its latest open-source model, Llama 4.

Despite falling behind peers in the AI race, the social media giant has sought to aggressively hire new staff to play catch-up. However, with this latest deal with publishers, Meta is expected to add another LAYER of competitiveness by enabling chatbots to give breaking news and light analysis, in addition to entertainment.

Whether those agreements materialise remains to be seen, as people close to the talks cautioned that negotiations could yet falter. Still, the fact that Meta is back at the table marks a notable shift from its recent hands-off approach to journalism.

Shares in Meta ROSE 0.53 percent on Thursday, reversing a small decline the day before. The stock has rallied nearly 33 percent since January and close to 39 percent over the past year.

Investors appear to be betting that its AI strategy, despite a slow start, could eventually bear fruit, particularly if it can secure the credibility of established newsrooms to underpin its next wave of digital products.

If you're reading this, you’re already ahead. Stay there with our newsletter.