Amazon Web Services (AWS) is reportedly experimenting with an AI content marketplace where publishers can license their content directly to companies that make AI products. The goal is to give news outlets and media brands a centralized platform to register their work, set licensing terms, and receive payment when AI developers use it for training or user-facing outputs.
The proposed platform is supported by AWS and could potentially sit alongside its other AI tools like Bedrock and QuickSight, which would be a hub for usage-based content licensing. Amidst escalating legal battles and a decline in referral traffic, the move aims to address the lack of transparency in AI content usage and provide fair revenue to publishers.
Under this plan, Amazon will compete with Microsoft, which recently launched the Publisher Content Marketplace, which has the same concept of transparent and usage-based licensing. Many publishers are demanding that compensation be based on how often AI uses their content, rather than just one-off payments. This is in response to the decline in traffic and ad revenue due to AI-generated summaries in search results.
For Amazon, this marketplace will expand its AI infrastructure with legal and licensed content, and could become a new revenue stream. At the same time, it promises publishers a more robust business as generative AI becomes the primary way audiences consume information online.
Overall, this move demonstrates Amazon's strategic position as a broker in one of the most complex issues in tech today: how AI systems should pay for the culture and content they are trained on. The result will be a win-win scenario for both AI developers and publishers, while helping the industry adapt to the new AI-powered landscape.
