Microsoft breaks dam on AI cash-for-content

A new Microsoft marketplace for AI firms to do business with content creators leaves other AI giants standing

by Rob Corbidge

Published: 15:00, 25 September 2025

If you own the marketplace, do you own the market? We ask, because in what is now a quickly developing area, Microsoft have this week announced the planned launch of a content marketplace, where publishers will be paid for the content used by their Copilot AI assistant.

Paid for the content used. Yes, that's right. Microsoft are now the first big tech business to move in this direction, a direction that is both inevitable, and also vital for the continued health of our industry. It has been said by people wiser than I that once the first big AI company moves on such a transactional mechanism, then the others will be forced to do so.

Even more surprising, and surprisingly encouraging, is a slide Microsoft used at its Partner Summit in Monaco (never Detroit, is it?) where the marketplace was announced to the invite-only attendees. That slide read: "You deserve to be paid on the quality of your IP."

It's an indication of where we've got to at the moment, that such a statement of simple commercial truth, the very basis of a lawful, trading society, apparently had the effect of a lightning bolt on the gathered executives. People deserving to be paid for the things they produce that are the basis upon which others make money? What a wild idea.

We do need to hold our free-market horses somewhat here though. The Publisher Content Marketplace, or PCM, is a trial. A pilot project. At inception, it will only be a marketplace for Microsoft Copilot and as such, it is modest in aim, with access for a limited number of publishers. Whatever figures you or your priest believe are true for the user numbers for the various AI products available currently to public and/or enterprise users, Microsoft's Copilot isn't regarded as the hot ticket. 

That said, Microsoft has incumbency at the operating system level, and a vast array of enterprise customers, as well as proper cloud computing muscle. Dare I say, it might also be in the position to do most good for the open web out of the whole Big Tech pack. In fairness, that bar isn't very high and it's somewhat icky to touch.

The Publisher Content Marketplace currently has no specific launch date, so details are sketchy, . It seems Microsoft's intention is to widen it to other AI products if successful, and quite possibly that doesn't only mean Microsoft products. This is the kind of thinking that might provoke Google into action. The rumour mill tells us Meta are already exploring the possibility.

The perfect scenario, short of us all waking up and finding Sam Altman was a bad dream, is that, because Copilot isn't being trained using content stolen off from the back of a website at midnight, its ability to provide accurate, up-to-date and useful information will increase accordingly. Consumers will experience this, favour it, and other players in the game will be forced to do something similar. It almost feels wrong to be invested in the success of a Big Tech product, when so much harm has been done to our industry by just such products, but, if Microsoft is willing to pay then it's a reality that must be accepted, or else reality will eat us for breakfast.

Returning to the ownership of such marketplaces, there's another sense of unease in that this is a marketplace owned by Microsoft. If you own the marketplace, you own the market. Again, the reality of this is that all the other publishing industry-driven content marketplace building initiatives we know about carry the caveat that they will require the involvement and co-operation of Big Tech to actually function, a willingness to co-operate that has been hitherto absent. A market where the customers still find it easier to loot the goods en route to vend is no market at all. 

In that respect, Microsoft's Publisher Content Marketplace is clearly an improvement. The question remains whether this will be one marketplace among many, with each of the bigger AI players having their own. Thinking ahead, that also brings the possibility of exclusivity being bought with content rights, and a competitive situation for content deals. What a turnaround that would be. Equally, we could be looking at a monopoly trial in a decade's time, as Microsoft are brought to heel for dominating the content marketplace in the manner that Google find themselves in court for currently, regarding their obscenely dominant advertising stack.

At least someone would be paying us.