Capitals, Oct. 13 (SANA) A coalition of major global media institutions announced Tuesday the launch of a unified collective effort to confront the challenges posed by artificial intelligence, while approximately 400 scientists called for the creation of an international body to oversee advanced AI systems.
SPUR coalition expands to over 80 members
The Standards for Publisher Usage Rights (SPUR) coalition, launched in February 2026, now includes more than 80 members from over 20 countries, according to Reuters. The New York Times, Agence France-Presse and The Economist joined this week, alongside The Atlantic, The Observer and publisher associations from Brazil, Japan, Argentina and Colombia.
The coalition, co-founded by British institutions including the BBC, Sky News and The Guardian, aims to create a “fair market” for the use of content by AI systems. It is developing industry-wide standards and technical systems to help publishers track and control how AI companies use their content and facilitate licensing agreements.
“AI assistants answer questions from millions of people every day using information that was often first gathered and verified by news agency journalists,” AFP Board Chairman Fabrice Fries said in a statement. “The value of this original work must be recognized, its source indicated, and payment made for it.”
Legal battles intensify
The coalition’s efforts come as publishers escalate legal action against AI companies. The New York Times sued OpenAI and Microsoft in late 2023, accusing them of copyright infringement by using millions of articles to train AI models. In a court document unsealed in September 2026, Microsoft’s Director of Applied Science Brent Hecht described the practice as “an astonishing theft of unprecedented proportions” and possibly “the largest theft of labor in human history”.
Microsoft said Hecht’s statements were “the opinions of one employee’s individual perspective” and “do not represent the company’s views”.
OpenAI and Microsoft argue their use of news content is transformative and falls under “fair use” laws. The US Department of Justice filed a brief in September supporting OpenAI and Microsoft, invoking “scientific progress,” economic growth and “national security”.
400 scientists call for international AI oversight
Separately, approximately 400 scientists, including AI pioneers Geoffrey Hinton and Yoshua Bengio, called for an international body to oversee containment standards and incident reporting for advanced AI systems capable of launching cyberattacks, according to Reuters.
In an open letter, researchers said frontier AI models should initially be air-gapped from external networks and subject to independent oversight, arguing that voluntary industry commitments are not sufficient.
The proposal comes a month after Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, Meta, xAI and Nvidia signed a White House accord committing to voluntary safety measures without any formal enforcement mechanism. The letter follows a series of incidents researchers say exposed weaknesses in how advanced AI systems are tested and contained, including cases where AI models bypassed insufficiently sandboxed environments and compromised external systems.
Signatories from 34 countries said organizations developing or testing cyber-capable models should immediately adopt high-assurance containment standards while governments work toward a more formal oversight regime.
Publishers are also grappling with declining referral traffic as search engines roll out AI-generated answers that allow users to consume information without clicking through to websites. Google organic-search referrals to more than 2,500 websites fell 33% globally between November 2024 and November 2025, according to a Reuters Institute report citing Chartbeat data.
The growing tension between content creators and AI companies has prompted some publishers to pursue licensing agreements. OpenAI has signed content deals with many news publishers, while other outlets including News Corp and Axel Springer have formed partnerships with the company.
Kh.A / Mzn
