At a recent INMA Webinar, Robert Hahn, director of business affairs and licencing at The Guardian, outlined how the company’s licencing strategy is engaging with AI businesses and AI use cases.

As Artificial Intelligence technologies grow more reliant on vast datasets, The Guardian’s extensive archive — over 20 million articles, millions of images, and thousands of hours of multimedia — has become a sought-after resource for AI developers.

To manage both the risks and opportunities, the company has taken a proactive approach to protecting its intellectual property and pursuing deals with organisations that respect news media IP, are prepared to pay appropriate compensation, and work in partnership to develop mutually beneficial products and services.

Licencing is a significant and growing revenue stream at The Guardian, alongside direct reader revenues and advertising. Its B2B licensing strategy spans more than 100 countries and covers a wide range of areas, including AI licensing, platform and database deals, media monitoring, education, media and new areas of exploitation like film and TV adaptations and book publishing.

To evaluate potential partnerships, The Guardian uses five organisational tests: referral, customer relationship ownership, reader revenue impact, licensing value, and reputational impact. While a deal may fall short in one or two areas, Hahn said the overall benefit must still lean in the publisher’s favour.

Navigating new territory

The company’s strategy to navigate the AI landscape follows a three-pronged path: enforcement, compliance, and commercialisation. First, legal enforcement ensures it is addressing misuse of its content across its multiple operating territories.

Second, the compliance effort — nicknamed “Operation Leaky Bucket” — aims to examine access points to Guardian content and address any vulnerabilities including its terms of service, existing commercial deals, and advanced tools to detect and block bots that scrape its content, strengthening both protection and its negotiating position.

Finally, The Guardian has pushed into licensing deals with  platforms, existing customers and new AI players. It has secured agreements with OpenAI and ProRata (with others in the pipeline) and aggregators such as Proquest and Factiva. Each deal is tailored, reflecting different AI use cases and content demands.

As Hahn noted, “It is not a one-size-fits-all.” Instead, The Guardian’s licencing strategy is evolving in real time, shaped by live negotiations and rooted in long-term sustainability.

Lessons from the licencing frontline

Hahn concluded with some of the key takeaways from The Guardian’s journey so far:

• Understand and organise your datasets: “A key component of deal-making is understanding your available content sets, ensuring they’re stored in structured databases and offering high levels of plug-and-play through APIs.”

• Know your content and rights: Ensure rights are clear and licensable for AI purposes.

• Protect your assets: Bot blocking and monitoring are essential to prevent misuse and protect negotiating power.

• Understand your customers: Examine how existing clients are using your content and whether they’re complying with current licenses.

• Close the knowledge gap: Learn the technical and commercial realities of AI to negotiate effectively with platforms.

• Establish your licensing principles: Create a framework for what makes a deal worthwhile, including risk appetite.

• Lean into collective action: Collaborate with other publishers and trade associations to gain leverage, share intelligence, and shape regulation.

• Do the deals that are right for you: This will do more than help the individual publisher; it will help “create a functioning market for AI licencing [that] can only help us in terms of our legal rights.”

• Be flexible and unconventional: In this new and uncertain market, creative deal structures and long-term thinking are key.

• Keep up regulatory reform and pressure: Stay active in coalitions and policy conversations, such as the UK’s creative coalition fighting proposed copyright changes.

By demonstrating a willingness to license and protect its content, The Guardian is helping set the precedent for responsible AI use, and as publishers work together, it will provide the “strength in numbers” that will protect and enforce their rights.

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