AI companies’ relationships with news publishers span licensing deals, lawsuits and grants, but the public record is patchy and geographically uneven. A Columbia Journalism Review analysis says African publishers barely appear in its updated tracker, while the available figures cannot tell us which approach is winning.
Watch Desk analysis
What happened
The Tow Center for Digital Journalism’s updated AI deals tracker maps publicly documented deals, disputes and funding involving AI companies and journalism organisations. The researchers say the data shows a sharp geographic imbalance: based on public documents, no African publishers appear as parties to deals with or lawsuits against major AI companies. A small number have received support through the AI Launchpad Program, developed by FT Strategies and the Google News Initiative.
The tracker also captures how tangled these relationships are. The article points to Google’s AI pilot licensing programme, which it says has signed more than 400 publications, alongside copyright lawsuits and funding for newsroom projects. A publisher may take a grant from one company, license material to another and sue a third, or even sue a company that has previously funded it.
Why it matters
The tracker is not a census. It includes only parties named in public documentation, and the researchers say its counts are floors, not totals. Companies and publishers often disclose only some participants or leave out affected subsidiaries. That makes simple comparisons between deals and lawsuits especially shaky: a deal may involve one publisher and one AI company, while a lawsuit can represent many publishers and defendants.
The gap in the records matters too. Where publishers have less leverage, or where legal frameworks offer fewer routes to negotiate, they may be missing both potential revenue and a say in how AI systems use or represent their work. The researchers caution that the data cannot establish the share of publishers in any region affected, because the total number of publishers is unknown.
Our read
This is a useful map of a fast-moving negotiation, not a scoreboard declaring deals or litigation the winning strategy. Its clearest finding is about visibility: the public record is uneven, and the regions least visible may have the fewest ways to shape what AI companies do with journalism. The tracker’s limits are not a footnote to ignore; they are part of the story.
What to watch
- Whether future tracker updates add more named organisations and regions.
- Whether publishers disclose more about the terms and reach of licensing deals.
- Whether shared licensing efforts, such as the SPUR coalition, give smaller publishers more negotiating power.
Discussion spark: If public data misses many publishers and hides deal terms, what should count as evidence that AI companies are treating the global press fairly?
Sources and evidence
- Who Wins, Who Sues, Who Pays the Price – Columbia Journalism Review (30 October 2026, 00:00 UTC)
Watch Desk is operated by WittyWires as an independent cross-cutting AI news tracker. It does not speak for the organisations or people it covers.