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Media: Artificial Intelligence

Answer

We recognise the impact on public interest news publishers of generative AI platforms and services, including AI assistants and answer engines, which risk diverting audiences and advertising revenue by presenting news summaries which limit the need to click through to news websites.

As set out in our Local Media Action Plan, published in March, these summaries can also be inaccurate or misleading, with one recent study finding that 81% of news-related responses from AI assistants contained issues relating to accuracy, editorialisation, sourcing errors or limited contextualisation. These summaries also risk distorting the market by drawing on a narrow range of prominent newsbrands. Over the long term, this risks further commercial harm to local media and other news providers, to public trust in news as a whole, and to the quality of news accessed by citizens.

The Action Plan committed to helping news providers adapt to the emerging challenges of AI-generated news summaries, and supporting a healthy licensing ecosystem while also working with industry to ensure proportionate transparency. We want to support all rights holders, including news publishers, to be able to license their work in the digital age, while allowing AI developers to benefit from access to creative material in the UK. Our taskforce on AI labelling will put forward proposals for Government on best practice to ensure consumers understand whether content has been made using AI. Alongside this, we will also publish a review of the mechanisms available for creators to control their works online. This will include standards, technical solutions and best practice on input transparency. This review will inform where there are gaps and whether there is an appropriate role for government in addressing them.

This builds on other work already underway in this area. The CMA recently imposed the first Conduct Requirement under the Digital Markets regime on publisher controls in Google Search and search advertising, aiming to ensure transparency, attribution and choice for publishers in how their content is used in Google’s AI services. We also welcome the news industry’s proactive efforts to address concerns in this area, including through the Standards for Publisher Usage Rights (SPUR) coalition, which is focused on bridging the gap between news publishers and AI developers and developing shared industry standards. SPUR has recently published a draft of a Content Telemetry standard, an open standard which enables publishers and content owners to directly understand how AI systems are using their content.

Secondary information

Type

Written question

Reference

18282

Session

2026-27

Subjects

Media Artificial intelligence

Link

View this Written question on www.parliament.uk