News/Media Alliance Submits Comments to Department of Justice Calling on Strong Enforcement of Antitrust Laws in the AI Marketplace

On July 15, the News/Media Alliance submitted comments to the Department of Justice following the Department's workshop on promoting competition in artificial intelligence (AI). The workshop, held on May 30, gathered together government and industry representatives, academics, content creators, inventors, and tech industry stakeholders to discuss issues related to competition and artificial intelligence, including creators' rights. The comments applauded the Department's attention to important questions posed by the proliferation of generative AI systems and models, including the fundamental challenges posed to news, magazine, and digital media publishers. Noting that the future of American publishers depends on fair competition between rights holders and AI developers, the comments discussed the misappropriation of publisher content for generative AI training and Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) purposes. The comments also encouraged the Department to safeguard against market abusive practices by dominant technology platforms, including by using its powers to investigate Google's AI Overviews functionality, as requested and discussed in more detail in an earlier letter by the Alliance. Lastly, the comments also called attention to the downstream distribution of publisher content by large online platforms providing search services. Read the full comments here.