Conversations with the powerful tech companies driving the generative AI revolution often leave news publishers feeling disadvantaged.

The reality is clear: The industry’s fragmented approach is not sustainable and no match for the pace of AI’s rapid advance. The window for effective negotiation is closing fast, and unless news publishers act now and strive for collective bargaining, they risk losing control over their own value.

The asymmetry problem

Generative AI is an oligopsony — a market where a few dominant buyers face many smaller sellers. Despite the tens of thousands of news organisations worldwide, just a handful of AI players dictate the terms.

The imbalance is staggering: Generative AI companies are backed by roughly US$700 billion in investment, with US$400 billion raised in 2025 alone — a figure that dwarfs the global valuation of the publishing industry.

And beyond capital, AI firms hold another critical advantage: data. Publishers have almost no visibility into how their content is used, trained on, or monetised, while AI companies have a complete view of both usage and user behaviour.

The consequences of inaction

This market structure gives AI companies a far stronger best alternative to a negotiated agreement (BATNA). Because most work with just a few publishers in each market, they can easily replace any single holdout, drastically reducing the leverage of individual publishers.

News companies, on the other hand, have few viable alternatives. And even if the terms offered today seem acceptable, they’re bound to change. AI companies are obligated to maximise shareholder value, and they will leverage their dominant position in the long term to do so.

Left unchecked, the outcome is predictable:

• Shrinking margins as buyers dictate lower prices and shift risk to publishers.
• Supplier consolidation, pushing out smaller publishers.
• A race to the bottom in content quality and financial sustainability.

Breaking the cycle: building a healthy, independent news ecosystem

To reset the balance, news publishers must improve their leverage and make the cost of unsuccessful negotiations higher for tech companies. That means rethinking both negotiation strategy and product innovation.

Collective licensing

As Product & Tech Initiative Lead Jodie Hopperton recently wrote in INMA’s recent “Fresh from San Francisco” newsletter: “Models still need current, accurate information. That will come from collective licensing, not individual arrangements.”

Collective bargaining ensures AI companies must compensate all publishers for the value they drive, or risk losing access to reliable information altogether. This materially impacts the quality of the services they offer their users and puts them at a competitive disadvantage against other AI companies who are willing to license the content.

Giving audiences alternatives

By integrating decentralised, sovereign answer engines that offer in-channel generative experiences, publishers can offer audiences AI-powered answers directly within their own platforms.

This builds stronger audience relationships, maximises the audience’s value, prevents leakage, and reduces the dependency on external sources.

The urgency of the hour: what you can do now

To capitalise on the news media industry’s talent, high-quality content, and credibility, publishers need to co-ordinate leverage. Every publisher, large or small, can contribute to shifting that balance:

• Support collective bargaining through associations, whether or not you’ve struck your own independent deal.
• Experiment with AI in your own channels to maximise revenue opportunities from your existing audience and understand how audiences engage with generative experiences.
• Protect your content with updated robots.txt and terms of use, with bot monitoring and blocking tools to ensure only legitimate, compensated use.

The final word

The future of journalism will be decided by those who act. If publishers continue to negotiate alone or don’t act, they’ll face a future defined by the few who hold the data, the dollars, and the distribution. If they unite, they can shape an ecosystem where quality information and fair value coexist.

The clock is ticking — but there’s still time to rewrite the story.

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