AI and Publishers: Every Deal, Rumour and Court Case in One Handy List

Who's wooing and who's suing? With Perplexity announcing revenue share deals with six publishers, I thought the time was right for a handy summary of AI and media deals

Perplexity, the AI-powered search engine that has set itself up as a challenger to Google, announced overnight that it will share revenue with six news publishers when it uses their reporting in its search results. It’s calling this the Perplexity Publishers’ Program.

Some publishers are signing deals with major AI companies - but can you trust the bots to deliver? (Image: ChatGPT4o)

If you’re cynical (actually, even if you’re not) you may see this as a response to Perplexity’s recent PR disasters. Forbes accused the company of ripping off exclusive reporting word-for-word and pumping it out on YouTube via an AI-voiced podcast. Then, Wired revealed that Perplexity’s search product was scraping answers when publishers had declared themselves off limits, and regularly hallucinating, in an article they titled “Perplexity is a Bullshit Machine”.

Sharing might be caring

But putting aside the astroturfing, I think Perplexity’s proposed revenue share model is interesting. OpenAI has avoided a revenue share model in its deals, instead paying a licensing fee to publishers. The licensing model sets up a world of winners and losers - there will likely be a limit to the number of media companies who get deals with AI companies, and the biggest players are most likely to benefit.

A revenue sharing deal, on the other hand, potentially opens the door for all comers to see some money from their content being used in AI. Microsoft has used this model for years in its Microsoft Start product (formerly known as MSN, and formerly my employer). Perplexity says the revenue share percentage for the publishers will be in “double digits”.

If other AI search products - OpenAI’s SearchGPT and Microsoft’s Bing Generative Search (both newly announced), along with Google’s troublesome AI Overviews - were to follow this model, it could mean new revenue streams for publishers.

This is pure speculation - Perplexity hasn’t even launched its ad product yet and the model may not work. But it does set up a pathway that is more inclusive and wide-ranging than licensing alone. Also notable is the branding as a “publisher program” - does this suggest that more Perplexity deals could be in the works? Maybe even a self-service portal like the Bing News PubHub?

One of the partners Perplexity has launched with is the Texas Tribune, an award-winning non-profit that produces a relatively small amount of high-quality journalism. The big question is, how much revenue will a smaller player like the Texas Tribune receive from this deal. To me, the most likely answer is not much, but I hope I am proven wrong and that this could be extended to other high-quality small publishers.

Just get to the deals list, already!

Anyway, I digress - the AI and media landscape is complex, and Perplexity’s announcement makes it more so. Who has made a deal? Who is close? Who is going to court? I couldn’t find a simple list summing up the landscape, so I made the table below. I provide a source for each report, indicate the current status of the deal or litigation, and briefly describe what is known.

I only spent a few hours on the list, so I am probably missing some deals - let me know if you spot an omission. As new deals or court cases are announced, I intend to update the table. To be clear, this list is concentrating on news and information only - entertainment, novels, academic literature and so on are out of scope.

A couple of notes - if you’re on desktop, click on the column headers to order information as you like. There are some key players missing - we don’t know what Anthropic’s plans are, for instance, and many major publishers are holding back too. It’s also heavy on US deals (with some EU and Japan thrown in), so if anyone knows of deals elsewhere, I’d appreciate the tips.

I hope you find it useful!