Media SPUR into action, a history on why publishers survive, the great indexing gap, and Hollywood vs the AI machines

Pinterest's AI moderation meltdown, artists call out Suno's fraud-fodder factory, and Reddit's compliance slip up - all in this week's Content Aware.

Published: 15:31, 26 February 2026

Corbidge comments on... the irony of AI theft
A dispute between AI companies alleging the taking of each other's work has had the expected effect amongst the publishing and other creative industries - a chorus of ironic jeers. US big hitter Anthropic surely knew it would get pilloried by those who have issue with the AI industry for taking without giving, but local politics and the need to look like having something unique forced their hand. Our ever original Head of Content Intelligence takes a closer look.
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Publishing & Media

Media rivals SPUR-red into action
A coalition of UK media giants has come together to try and prevent the pillaging of their and other media organisation's content by random AIs. The BBC, Financial Times, Sky News, and The Telegraph have thrown their weight behind SPUR, the brainchild of AI/media expert David Buttle, showing how even traditional rivals can work together when the bigger picture is that of declining journalism, declining trust, and a future where their content is never under their own control. As David says, "SPUR will work to ensure that media owners can exercise their rights, protect their intellectual property and, if they choose to license, do so on the basis of transparent flows of data that will allow an equitable exchange of value for use of IP across the generative AI value chain." Give David a nudge for more information and to join up.
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An essay: Publishers refuse to die (again)
Publishers are used to being routinely declared doomed, either from telegraph, radio, television, the internet, and now AI is supposedly here to finish the job. Yet despite all of these, publishers such as The New York Times, founded in 1851, now counts 11 million subscribers and thrives astride the media landscape. For sure, things aren’t getting easier – but were they ever? As content consumption increases so does the need for someone to create it - especially as audiences give short shrift to AI generated efforts. Industry strategist and creative operator Alanna Laforet considers the perennial appeal of original content and why it is always an ace in the hole for publishers.
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Wine, books, and behind-the scenes journalism
The Tampa Bay Times is taking journalism to happy hour - literally. After seeing a bookstore packed with different book club fans, journalist Lauren Peace applied the same concept to her fellow journalists with monthly "article clubs" where reporters can spill behind-the-scenes tea and chat about their stories over wine and coffee. The end goal was to convert people who don't mind paying for books to drop some cash for news as well, and it turned out not to be a bad idea as the first event pulled 15 curious souls, while the second crammed 30 people into a small bookstore. It's a win-win situation, the bookstore gets new visitors while journalism gets new fans.
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Hollywood's AI breaking point
Hollywood aint vibing with AI, even as the hype around video-generation platforms accelerates. AI-animated shorts are being removed and ByteDance's Seedance 2.0 has triggered a legal avalanche as Netflix, the MPA, and CAA are all screaming IP theft. The entire Hollywood creative class is operating in full existential dread mode - directors are telling festival crowds "this tech is not inevitable", filmmakers are launching "No AI" festivals, and industry veterans are calling out major studios for getting too cozy with AI.
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Expert guide: International by design: How Glide CMS powers global publishing
International publishing can be a mess - juggling disconnected systems, praying nothing breaks, and watching expensive rebuilds eat your budget while one wrong click can mean Spanish content ending up under English categories. Enter Glide CMS with a “we’ve got it all covered” approach: one platform that deals with cross-border workflows, where regional teams only see their content, and new markets launch in hours instead of months. We’re bringing you international publishing, without the operational chaos.
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Big Tech

AI chaos > user experience
Pinterest's AI moderation seems to be going through an identity crisis after they started flagging real human art as " AI Modified", while actual AI slop is running rampant across the platform. In a classic case of "it's an inside job", the company's own AI tools that are meant to filter AI slop are failing and real human accounts are being flagged left and right. Users have been screaming into the void, but Pinterest is doubling down on AI for now.
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Google's vanishing data trick
Google Search Console's page indexing report has been playing hide and seek with data from before December 15th, leaving site owners scratching heads wondering where their metrics went to. If you have been constantly refreshing dashboards and wondering if you've been singled out by the algorithm gods, you aren't alone, but Google's John Mueller chimed in to confirm that early December latency issues are to blame. Hopefully it will be patched soon enough, but until then you can blame Google for any missing reports.
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Discover decoded
Ever wondered what is actually happening under the hood of Google Discover? Well, someone has popped open Discover's SDK to see how it all works, and the findings are eye opening. Basically, Discover runs a 9-stage content pipeline and when a user decides they don't want to see content from a certain publisher, the entire domain gets supressed across Discover. With just one tap, the entire site gets ghosted. The kicker is that there is no boost mechanism that works in reverse, and penalties stay while rewards don't. If you were ever confused as to why your Discover traffic has vanished overnight, take a look at Metehan Yesilyurt's findings.
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AI & Copyright

Gemini, Grok, and the great book spill
A new study, conducted by researchers at Stanford and Yale, has proved that the world's top LLMs - OpenAI, Google, Anthropic, Meta, and xAI - can be prompted to spit out near-verbatim copies of entire bestselling novels, despite the claims that systems don't store copyrighted works. Gemini regurgitated 76.8% of Harry Potter, while Grok reeled off 70.3%, and even with guardrails in place, researchers managed to get almost the entirety of books either by strategic prompting or by jailbreaking the models. This is another headache for AI companies battling copyright lawsuits, undermining the common "we learn, we don't store" defence look wobbly.
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Suno's music heist
An open letter is making the rounds, comparing AI music platform Suno to thieves who robbed the Louvre - except Suno is doing it in broad daylight and in front of everyone's faces. The letter is accusing the AI music platform of training its AI on the works of artists without their permission, and then spewing out 7 million tracks which flood streaming platforms and dilute royalty pools. While Suno's Chief Music Officer - this implies they are somehow musically aware, but we have no insight into that - claims they're empowering billions of fans to create music; artists beg to differ and argue the platform is putting them in service of the technology. What really stings is that according to Deezer, 85% of streams from fully AI generated tracks are not even copyrightable, which means Suno gets to keep all the cash.
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Reddit's costly age-check oopsie 
Reddit has just been slapped with a £14.47 million fine from the UK's data protection regulator for failing to protect children's data. While the platform did ban under-13s in its terms of service, they didn't actually implement age verification until July 2025, meaning Reddit collected data without legal basis and potentially exposed them to harmful content. On top of that, the ICO also found that Reddit has skipped class when mandatory data protection assessments were held, despite knowing that teenagers use the platform. Reddit is using the usual defence tactics, they're "deeply committed" to user privacy, they have now rolled out age verification using a platform recently dropped by Discord over surveillance concerns, and are planning to appeal.
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