Artificial intelligence professionals are increasingly worried that the new technology poses a threat not just to humanity, but also to the very existence of news publishers. After all, publishers are made up of people too. This concern was highlighted in court documents filed on Thursday by several news organizations, including The New York Times Company, in their copyright infringement lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft.

The filings reference internal written materials from an OpenAI executive, presumably from an internal memo, which state that publishers face an 'existential threat' from AI products. We've long known that publishers fear AI could jeopardize their survival. This argument was already central to the lawsuit that The New York Times filed against OpenAI and Microsoft in 2023, which has since been consolidated with similar cases from other publishers. What's particularly noteworthy is that OpenAI and Microsoft have internally acknowledged this threat and are aware that it could rebound on them as well.

The court documents quote an internal Microsoft document as saying: 'Our AI content strategy has initiated a "death loop" that harms both model performance and the entire internet ecosystem. It is rare for an end product to threaten the economic foundation of its own core content suppliers.' In other words, if news publishers were to collapse en masse, AI chatbots would lose one of their core sources of content. This has become a genuine dilemma for the tech giants.

Of course, over the past two decades, a large number of news organizations have already disappeared as digital advertising diverted revenue away from traditional media. AI chatbots now have the potential to push the remaining news outlets even closer to the brink. According to the court filings, one of the issues, as cited by insiders at OpenAI, is that chatbots are too good at reproducing news content. The filings quote OpenAI employee Nick Turley: once ChatGPT provides an answer, users have 'no sufficient reason to click through to the original source, such as a news website.' The documents also quote another OpenAI executive, Greg Brockman, as saying: 'By the way, our ability to process news content is very strong.'

The core dispute in this lawsuit is whether OpenAI violated copyright laws by using publisher content without permission. However, even if the publishers win the case, it won't change the reality that, for the average user, getting news through a chatbot is far more convenient. If AI companies are dependent on publisher content, they should take concrete action to support it. We see almost no possibility of OpenAI, Anthropic, or Google acquiring news publishers on a large scale. The logical solution is for AI companies to pay news organizations substantial licensing fees that would cover the high costs of journalism and provide reasonable returns.

While OpenAI has signed content licensing agreements with some publishers, it's clear from the current situation that the amounts paid are far from sufficient to compensate for the losses chatbots are inflicting on the news industry. It's becoming increasingly apparent that even the tech companies themselves realize this is an unavoidable problem they must address.

OpenAI Builds a New Enterprise Sales Team

OpenAI is once again assembling a sales team dedicated to selling its products to enterprise customers. Reports from Thursday indicated that OpenAI has hired Brian McCarthy from the Space Exploration Technologies division to serve as its global head of sales, reporting to Dali Rajcic, who recently joined from Google's Wiz division. Additionally, two senior employees from Snowflake are set to join the team as well.

Observers are hoping this new team will last longer than the previous one. The former sales unit was led by Denise Dresser, a former chief revenue officer at Salesforce who left that company in December, bringing along several Salesforce employees, including Kaylen Voss, to join OpenAI. But just last month, Dresser departed OpenAI, and many of those who had followed her from Salesforce have also left, with several potentially heading back to their former employer, including Kaylen Voss.