NYT, Economist among publishers joining coalition to curb unpaid AI use

The New York Times, Agence France-Presse, and The Economist have joined over 40 other publishers in a coalition called the Standards for Publisher Usage Rights (SPUR). The coalition, launched in February, now has 80 members across 20 countries. New additions include The Atlantic and Brazil’s National Association of Newspapers, joining established members like the Financial Times, BBC, and Associated Press.

Publishers are intensifying legal actions to prevent AI companies from utilizing their content without consent to train large language models. Earlier this month, USA Today and several newspapers owned by it filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging copyright infringement. OpenAI, backed by Microsoft, is also facing similar copyright claims from prominent authors and news organizations, including the New York Times.

The SPUR coalition, funded solely by its members, is developing industry-wide standards and technical systems to assist publishers in monitoring and controlling how AI companies use their content and to facilitate licensing agreements. Rebecca Grossman-Cohen, head of strategic partnerships and chief of staff at the New York Times, emphasized the need to balance intellectual property protection with technological advancements in a statement.

Publishers are also confronting the challenge of waning referral traffic as search engines roll out AI-generated answers, enabling users to access information without clicking through to websites. According to a Reuters Institute report, Google organic-search referrals to over 2,500 websites decreased by 33% globally between November 2024 and November 2025, based on data from Chartbeat.

In response to these challenges, SPUR recently launched its Content Telemetry Standard, which aims to standardize how AI agents record and report their usage of media content, ensuring that creators are fairly compensated for their work.