Support NY Bill Requiring Big Tech to Publish Sources
- The New York State Broadcasters Association
- May 27
- 2 min read
Updated: Jun 3
Assemblyman Steve Otis, Chairman of the Assembly Science Committee, has introduced legislation (A.8595) that will help broadcasters. Broadcasters invest millions of dollars annually to gather and report local news in communities throughout the Empire State. Big Tech companies gather this original news content, usually without consent or compensation, and use it to train their large language AI systems in order to generate summaries of the gathered information.
AI developers use technological tools to scrape original reporting from behind news organizations’ paywalls and to evade technologies designed to prevent unauthorized copying of news content. Big Tech AI developers do not invest in creating local news content. They simply take it without permission and repackage it into summaries, which attract readers and advertisers in direct competition with news organizations. This practice deprives news organizations of the subscription and advertising revenue that enables them to pay journalists.
This legislation is narrowly crafted to notify news publishers and broadcasters when their content is being used to train and fine-tune large language AI systems. It simply requires transparency from Big Tech AI developers.
Pursuant to the legislation, Big Tech companies would be required to maintain a publicly available website listing the news sources they have used to train their AI systems. The legislation allows a news provider to bring a private cause of action against an AI developer when it fails to list the news sources used to train its large language AI system.
The legislation is fully consistent with federal copyright law. The focus of the legislation is simply to provide transparency. Liability is imposed on an AI developer solely for failing to list the news sources it has used to train and fine-tune its large language AI model. This is distinct from copyright liability, which focuses on the use of such content. Thus, the legislation does not address whether using content to train large language AI systems constitutes “fair use” under federal copyright law—it only requires disclosure.
NYSBA strongly supports this legislation. We are working to get the legislation introduced in the Senate.
You can access our memorandum supporting this legislation here.
You can access A.8595 here.
