FT CEO: We should insist on payment from AI companies

John Ridding

Financial Times chief executive John Ridding told other news publishers they “have leverage and should insist on payment” from AI companies, reports Charlotte Tobitt of Press Gazette.

Tobitt reports, “His words for the industry at the WAN-IFRA World News Media Congress in Copenhagen came one month after the Financial Times became the first UK news publisher to announce a licensing deal with OpenAI.

“Ridding said on Tuesday of the deal that the FT had wanted to be an ‘early mover’ but also to understand the potential use cases and impact of AI and to broaden its overall reach.

“Giving a keynote speech, Ridding said: ‘The payment matters, for principle and for revenue of course, but also important is the opportunity to extend our reach and to understand how users will interact with AI.

“‘As with the digital and mobile revolutions, pulling up the drawbridge or trying to hold back the tide is not going to be a strategy for success.'”

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Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.