The New York Times is approaching artificial intelligence licensing with caution, insisting that any deal must do more than simply deliver a cheque. Speaking at the Digiday Publishing Summit in Miami last week, Adam Greenberg, the paper’s vice-president of strategic partnerships, said the market for AI licensing has improved for publishers, but remains immature and difficult to navigate. He argued that while AI companies are increasingly expected to pay for content or at least allow publishers to opt out, the surrounding marketplace is still far from settled.

Greenberg said the central challenge is that publishers cannot yet know how their material will be used over time, or what the dominant AI products will look like in a few years. That uncertainty makes it hard to price rights fairly, define how content may be reused and decide who should control outputs created from licensed material. Industry commentary from ContentDividend and Talkory has made similar points, noting that publishers entering AI agreements need clarity on training, retrieval and display rights, attribution, revenue share, duration and audit provisions if they are to avoid disputes later on.

For the Times, Greenberg said, any agreement must satisfy three tests: clear value, a durable relationship and firm controls over how material is used. He rejected the idea of one-off payments with no wider strategic benefit, arguing that a licensing arrangement should also support collaboration, ecosystem development and, ideally, stronger referral or attribution links that send readers back to the publisher’s own platforms. That matters because the Times remains, above all, a subscription business built on direct audience relationships and habitual readership.

Greenberg said the company’s partnership with Amazon fits those requirements because it combines compensation, collaboration and safeguards that leave the publisher comfortable with the arrangement. He declined to discuss whether other AI licensing deals are in place, but suggested the small number of public transactions reflects how demanding these negotiations are. Even as AI labs and platforms increasingly speak the language of sustainability, copyright respect and creator revenue, he said, the practical details remain the hardest part.

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Source: Noah Wire Services