Hindi English Translation || Editorial || ​Theft and compensation: On news publishers and AI models

​Theft and compensation: On news publishers and AI models

Large language artificial intelligence models are fuelled by content on the Internet, and much of this content comprises news reports gathered, curated (सावधानीपूर्वक संग्रहित) and published by media professionals and organisations with decades of experience. As creative industries reckon (मानना, गणना करना) with their labour getting diffused into unaccountable (जवाबदेही से मुक्त) clusters of graphics processing units that reproduce styles and spit out (To eject from the mouth; (informal) to say something quickly and angrily) human-level artwork in mere seconds, the news industry has reason to fear the compounding of permission-less innovation into an existentially (अस्तित्वगत रूप से, तात्विक रूप से) threatening heist (डकैती, चोरी) of several lifetimes of work. Previous waves of digitisation peeled away captive (कैद किया हुआ, बंदी) audiences from print and broadcast media by replacing these with a web-charged attention economy, and Big Tech platforms further squeezed news media’s place in these rapid transformations by often short-changing the very sources of information that their businesses relied on to be useful to the public. In a landscape where even precarious (अस्थिर, जोखिमपूर्ण, अनिश्चित) business models in the Internet age are threatened by a reluctance (अनिच्छा, हिचकिचाहट) to pay for news and declining public trust in professional news-gathering, AI may very well be a body blow. It is clear: AI firms, with their billions in market capitalisation, must not be permitted to just take what they want from the Internet, synthesise (संश्लेषण करना) these inputs into monetised insights, and pretend that the whole process is a form of victimless, innovative progress. Publishers have a clear right to decide who gets to hoover up (To quickly or greedily consume or acquire large quantities of something, often referring to information or resources) their entire corpuses (संग्रह, ग्रंथ समूह), and to ensure that their businesses benefit from the AI wave. To this end, the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade’s committee on copyright and AI is a welcome step.

This is not a decelerationist, or “decel” demand, as those who advocate for rapid AI development might be quick to say. The news industry has fought as search giants and social media companies profited enormously on the back of its content and set the terms for how the financial benefits flowed back to it. That cannot be permitted to happen — as social media platforms turn more and more into video-focused walled gardens, discouraging even a step outside their apps. For the news organisations, the avenues to earn are shrinking. As AI-generated overviews of news content with source links are reduced to a footnote, it is time for compensation to be negotiated at the time of publishers’ content being scraped from their websites in the first place. AI firms may claim “fair use” in model training, but there is nothing fair — morally or legally — about accessing and disseminating troves of news without taking the creators and processors into confidence. News publishers and policymakers must now fight for their share in the AI era.

Courtesy: The Hindu

Important Word List With Meaning

1.Curated (Adjective)

Hindi Meaning - सावधानीपूर्वक संग्रहित
English Meaning - Carefully selected and organized or presented.

2.Reckon (Verb)

Hindi Meaning - मानना, गणना करना
English Meaning - To establish by counting or calculation; to consider or regard in a specified way; to think or suppose.

3.Unaccountable (Adjective)

Hindi Meaning - जवाबदेही से मुक्त
English Meaning - Not required or expected to justify actions or decisions; unexplainable.

4.Heist (Noun)

Hindi Meaning - डकैती, चोरी
English Meaning - A robbery or burglary, especially one from a bank or museum.

5.Existentially (Adverb)

Hindi Meaning - अस्तित्वगत रूप से, तात्विक रूप से
English Meaning - In a way that relates to existence; concerning the fundamental questions of human existence, freedom, and meaning.

6.Precarious (Adjective)

Hindi Meaning - अस्थिर, जोखिमपूर्ण, अनिश्चित
English Meaning - Not securely held or in position; dangerously likely to fall or collapse; dependent on chance; uncertain.

7.Captive (Adjective)

Hindi Meaning - कैद किया हुआ, बंदी
English Meaning - Imprisoned or confined.

8.Reluctance (Noun)

Hindi Meaning - अनिच्छा, हिचकिचाहट
English Meaning - Unwillingness or disinclination to do something.

9.Synthesise (Verb)

Hindi Meaning - संश्लेषण करना
English Meaning - To make (something) by combining different things; to combine a number of things into a coherent whole.

10.Corpuses (Noun)

Hindi Meaning - संग्रह, ग्रंथ समूह
English Meaning - A collection of written texts, especially the entire works of a particular author or a body of material on a particular subject; a collection of knowledge.

11.Spit out (Phrasal verb)

English Meaning - To eject from the mouth; (informal) to say something quickly and angrily.

12.Hoover up (Phrasal verb)

English Meaning - To quickly or greedily consume or acquire large quantities of something, often referring to information or resources.