AI to pay authors, Perplexing times, helpful chatbots, and new scraping lawsuits

Wikipedia battles bots, Apple and OpenAI under X fire, and YouTube's sneaky makeovers - all in this week's Content Aware.

Published: 15:42, 28 August 2025

"Trust me, I'm a techbro..."
If you think LLM stands for Literature Looting Machine, you may never really "like" AI - for many people, it's simply today's new asbestos. Like it or not though, and whether you know it or not, you will almost certainly end up using AI and in some way being reliant on it - as business or individual. Whatever the opinion of the publishing and media trades are of the backstory of AI, we are collectively finding ways way to work with it as a tool in ways that we trust. What is proving harder to overcome though is more fundamental: lack of trust in the people behind it. Smallprint enthusiast Rich Fairbairn shares his thoughts on how the words and actions of some tech firms are poisoning the well of trust between our industry and theirs.
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Canada-EU deal offers hope to publishers
As Canada and the EU explore a landmark digital trade agreement, news industry leaders Paul Deegan of News Media Canada, and Wout van Wijk of News Media Europe, state in plain terms the threat posed by unregulated content scraping to media and journalism - and how to perhaps begin resetting the scales. The duo have form in building a good case, and Deegan was a key figure in the emergence of Canada's ground breaking Online News Act, which did actually manage to get Google to open its pockets.
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Anthropic brought to book
Anthropic has settled a landmark lawsuit brought by U.S. authors over pirated books being used for AI training, in a decision which could become a milestone in shaping AI's legal landscape. A judge flagged the company for downloading up to seven million titles, for which the potential penalties could have dwarfed its value, and while lawyers argued fair use made it all OK, it cut a deal rather than set a precedent or leave it to the judge to rule. The suit is constrained to a limited number of authors in the US but is being studied feverishly worldwide.
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Perplexity stuck in hot waters
Perplexity just hit a legal wall in New York, where a federal judge swatted down its attempt to dodge a copyright lawsuit from News Corp's Dow Jones and New York Post who allege Perplexity munches on their articles without a penny to share, then spits out answers which compete with the publishers it's copying. The AI firm argued that the case belongs in California not in New York where the claim is lodged, but the judge didn't feel like playing along. On the other side of the world, in Japan, it's now also being sued by Asahi Shimbun and Nikkei for copyright infringement.
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Wikipedia vs bots
AI writing has a problem with its reputation, and Wikipedia is not letting it slide. The crowd-sourced encyclopaedia, built on human trust and careful editing, has banned AI-written articles because bots tend to leave fingerprints everywhere: overly dramatic tone, phrasing, neat conclusions, and citations which regularly lead nowhere.
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Helping local news one chatbot at a time
A new report shows that even the smallest local newsrooms are finding ways to utilise chatbots, without breaking the bank or hiring a full tech team, with a little help of UNC's Local NewsBot Studio program. They built custom chatbots in under a month using low-code tools and a micro budget to experiment with bots to help field reader questions, dig through archives, or handle subscriptions. They differed from newsroom to newsroom, were smart and got jobs done, and might just be a useful tool for local journalism.
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xAI fires legal shots at Apple and OpenAI
Elon Musk's xAI and social platform X have thrown down the legal gauntlet to Apple and OpenAI, accusing them of teaming up in monopoly against X-ey alternatives. Musk claims the App Store sidelines rivals such as Grok while rolling out the red carpet for OpenAI's ChatGPT - the same sort of criticism lawmakers levelled at Apple over its Google search engine agreement. While OpenAI shrugs it all off as more Musk drama, this tech soap opera isn't going away soon.
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OpenAI scraped, Trusted Reviews paid
Trusted Reviews just survived a digital blitz with 1.6 million content scrapes in a single day by OpenAI, all while having a robots.txt file telling the AI firm to take a hike. While OpenAI looked like they got what they came for, Trusted Reviews got server strain, frustrated visitors, and a hefty hosting bill. And what did they get in turn? A measly 603 visitors with engagement that would barely stir a teapot. Will anyone at OpenAI pick up the tab?
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YouTube's secret AI makeovers
YouTube quietly rolled out the vaseline on the lens of many of its Shorts, altering faces and smoothing skin without telling creators of the AI beauty filter none of them asked for. While the company says it's just a "machine-learning experiment" to boost video quality, creators worry that this subtle meddling might misrepresent their work and erode audience trust.
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4chan to UK regulator: you have no authority here
There is a new legal brawl spanning the Atlantic as 4chan and Kiwi Farms sue UK regulator Ofcom in a U.S. court, accusing it of overreach. On one side, UK comms body Ofcom argues that the UK's Online Safety Act applies to any platform with British users; the forums argue that enforcing UK laws on American soil violates their constitutional rights of free speech.
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Newsrooms bet on brains, not just headlines
Newsrooms are trying to navigate an ever-changing media landscape as AI and fractured platforms shake up how news reaches audiences. The solution for many is to double down on education, audience interaction, and use of AI-powered tools to achieve a competitive edge. The Reuters Institute looks at how some brands are leaning on what they are most famous for to build lasting connections.
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Paywalls pro bono
Rising numbers of small and large news outlets are being forced to keep their goods behind a paywall to survive, but with only 17% of Americans paying for news, journalism risks becoming more of a luxury good than a civic right. One proposal is for "readership assistance programs" which aim to bring digital news subscriptions to lower-income readers, modelled after drug company discount programs and funded by philanthropies or publishers. Why? Because informed citizens shouldn't be paywalled out of participating in society says US law professor Martin Skladany.
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