25 February 2026

Europe Must Make AI Firms Pay for Training Data

ANYA SCHIFFRIN and ROBERTA CARLINI

AI summaries and chatbots are siphoning traffic from news sites, but the current process for demanding compensation – suing tech firms – is slow, expensive, and unfair. The European Union must act now to implement a fixed payment scale, before more media outlets go under and tech firms become too powerful to regulate.

Media outlets worldwide are dying. On top of a persistent lack of funding, they must now contend with AI summaries and chatbots, which are siphoning away audiences. A recent study found that in 2025, online traffic to news sites fell by one-third. This problem should concern everyone, not just journalists and media executives, because democratic societies cannot function without quality information. At a time of polarization, fragmentation, and democratic backsliding, news outlets that provide quality journalism are more necessary than ever.

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