A coalition of news publishers pushing for payment when AI companies use their work has more than doubled in size, a development that shows the same fight over unpaid use of copyrighted material that has unsettled book publishing is accelerating across media. The New York Times, Agence France-Presse and The Economist joined the Standards for Publisher Usage Rights coalition on October 12, Reuters reported in an account carried by The Straits Times.
SPUR, launched in February, now counts more than 80 members across more than 20 countries, according to The Straits Times. New arrivals include The Atlantic and Brazil's National Association of Newspapers, joining founding members such as the Financial Times, the BBC and the Associated Press.
Press Gazette, which said it has itself joined as an associate member, reported that the new sign-ups also include ITV News, The Observer, Quanta Magazine, France's L'Equipe, New Zealand's Stuff, Belgium's DPG Media and UK consumer title Which?. Trade bodies including the International News Media Association, Magazines Canada and the Interamerican Press Association have also signed on, Press Gazette reported.
For authors watching how the publishing industry is responding to AI training on copyrighted text, the coalition's growth signals an attempt to set shared rules before courts or individual deals do it piecemeal. SPUR is funded entirely by its members and is building technical systems meant to let publishers track how AI firms use their content and to support licensing negotiations, The Straits Times reported, citing the coalition's website.
Legal pressure builds alongside the coalition
The expansion comes as publishers pursue AI companies in court. USA Today and several newspapers it owns sued OpenAI earlier in October, alleging copyright infringement, according to The Straits Times. OpenAI and its backer Microsoft already face similar copyright claims from authors and news organizations, including the New York Times.
Press Gazette noted that the New York Times was the first major publisher to sue OpenAI, filing in December 2023 in a case that has not yet reached trial, and that the Times later sued Perplexity as well. OpenAI has signed roughly 20 licensing deals with publishers, Press Gazette reported, and faces a roughly similar number of active lawsuits, some brought by coalitions of multiple publishers. Other licensing deals have been struck with Perplexity, Amazon and Meta.
The New York Times has one such agreement itself: a licensing deal with Amazon announced in May 2025 covering real-time display of summaries and short excerpts within products like the Alexa voice assistant, and allowing use of Times content to train Amazon's AI models, Press Gazette reported.
Rebecca Grossman-Cohen, the Times' head of strategic partnerships, said in a statement reported by The Straits Times: "Intellectual property protection and technological advancement can and must co-exist." Press Gazette quoted her adding that the Times wants standards "that are not unilaterally set by tech platforms."
Tracking how content gets used
SPUR recently introduced what it calls its Content Telemetry Standard, an open-source framework meant to standardize how AI agents record and report their use of media content, The Straits Times reported. Press Gazette described the standard as tracking several stages: an AI scraper retrieving content, that content being loaded into an AI system's generation context, how it is cited in AI answers, how it appears to a user, and whether the user then clicks, copies, shares or acts on it. SPUR said it is now working with industry partners to get the framework adopted and to improve the efficacy of licensing talks, according to Press Gazette.
The push comes as publishers lose traffic to AI-generated search answers. Google organic-search referrals to more than 2,500 websites fell 33% globally between November 2024 and November 2025, The Straits Times reported, citing a Reuters Institute report that drew on data from Chartbeat.
SPUR co-founder David Buttle, quoted by Press Gazette, said publishers "have no mechanism to ensure they are fairly compensated for their work" under current arrangements and that "in many cases, their output is literally being stolen." Press Gazette reported that among SPUR's members there is a mix of publishers suing AI companies, others doing licensing deals, some doing both, and some doing neither — an indication that the coalition is meant to set common ground rules rather than a single shared legal strategy.
Sources
- NYT, Economist among publishers joining coalition to curb unpaid AI use — The Straits Times,
- NYT, AFP, The Economist join 40+ publishers to stop AI firms monetising content without permission — The Economic Times,
- New York Times among surge of sign-ups to publisher AI coalition SPUR — Press Gazette,
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