A legislative initiative that will require Google to pay California publishers for news that appears on its platform has resulted in an agreement that may give $250 million over five years to newsrooms and a synthetic intelligence initiative, in line with an announcement from the office of East Bay Rep. Buffy Wicks.
The announcement described the deal as a “nationwide first partnership between the state, news publishers, major technology companies and charities,” but didn’t provide a breakdown of how much each of those parties would pay and exactly how much would go to the news outlets and the way much would go to a “National AI Innovation Accelerator.”
A big portion of the funds will go to newsrooms, the announcement said.
“The goal is to advance $100 million in the first year to jumpstart the effort,” the announcement said.
Also unclear is the fate of two bills that were on their solution to Gov. Gavin Newsom's desk. Assembly Bill 886, introduced by Wicks last yr, would require Google and Meta to barter payments to news publishers for content on their platforms. Assembly Bill 1327, by Sen. Steve Glazer of Orinda, would tax tech giants for collecting user data and use the cash to fund news outlets.
Wicks and Glazer's offices didn’t immediately reply to questions on the bills.
Newsom, who had not commented publicly on the bill, was quoted within the announcement as promising that the deal would offer funds “to support hundreds of new journalists” and help “rebuild a robust and vibrant California press for years to come.”
The statement from Wicks' office said the funding “will include contributions from technology platforms and the State of California.”
The News/Media Alliance, which represents nearly 2,000 U.S. news publishers, including this news organization, identified that a federal court had just found that Google has a monopoly on Internet search.
“Google is a dominant monopoly that derives significant revenue from scraping and repackaging high-quality news content, depriving publishers of the ability to monetize their content and invest in journalists,” said alliance president Danielle Coffey. “Today's announcement underscores the need for federal legislation and possible judicial remedies to fix this broken market.”
The alliance said it might push for passage of the federal Journalism Competition & Preservation Act to “provide fair compensation to news publishers.” This federal law, like AB 886, would force big tech corporations to pay news publishers for his or her content.
The artificial intelligence accelerator, which will probably be managed “in partnership with a private nonprofit,” appears to serve a purpose beyond supporting the news media. It will provide money and other support to “industries and communities” in areas comparable to journalism, the environment, racial equity “and beyond” for experiments with AI to “support them in their work,” the announcement said.
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