Stuff Group joins global coalition to fight AI copyright theft

Stuff Group has joined a powerful global media coalition established to prevent AI companies from stealing and profiting from journalism without permission.

The Standards for Publisher Usage Rights (SPUR) coalition now has more than 80 global members including The New York Times, Agence France-Presse, The BBC, The Economist and the International News Media Association (INMA), to tackle the copyright theft of its work from AI corporates.

Together SPUR will create a fair market for the use of content in AI systems, establishing clear rules of engagement and ensuring licensing becomes the only viable route for AI models to use copyrighted journalism.

Announcing Stuff and more than 40 other new members to SPUR, Rebecca Grossman-Cohen of the New York Times said intellectual property protection and technological advancement can and must co-exist.

"High quality journalism is crucial to healthy democracies and to the functioning of AI products and experiences," she says. "We are proud to work with SPUR to develop robust standards and protections for copyrighted content."

The New York Times and other US publishers and authors are currently suing OpenAI for copyright infringement.

Stuff Owner and Publisher Sinead Boucher, who is also First Vice-President of INMA, says New Zealand has no protection against the theft of its journalism and other creative work as the Government has continually delayed legislation which would ensure fair bargaining with the global platforms who profit from local media.

"We know that high quality journalism is essential for AI companies to fuel their business models yet there is no compensation for the investment we make in this work," she says. "The Coalition is one way we can establish clear, industry-wide rules of engagement but without the Government enforcing fair bargaining we will only see the continuation of this theft."

The Coalition has set a standardised process by which AI agents and model builders record their use of media content and report that back to publishers - a critical foundation on which a fair market can be built. Publishers from across the world have joined SPUR, which was only established in February this year.

"I encourage every New Zealand publisher to join the coalition now and continue our lobbying of the New Zealand Government to finally act in the best interest of our democracy and our creative industries," Boucher says.

"We must have a sustainable and trustworthy information economy if we are to protect our sovereignty in the global AI race. SPUR is one plank in that protection - Government legislation is the desperately needed next one."