NYT, AFP, Economist Join 80-Member AI Content Coalition

The New York Times, Agence France-Presse and The Economist have joined the Standards for Publisher Usage Rights (SPUR) coalition, which now represents more than 80 publishers across over 20 countries. The member-funded coalition is developing common technical standards to track how AI systems retrieve, cite, display and generate engagement with publishers’ content, with the aim of supporting licensing deals and compensation; it says it will not set prices. The effort comes as publishers pursue copyright lawsuits against AI companies and face declining search referrals as AI-generated answers let users get information without visiting news websites. SPUR says its Content Telemetry Standard is intended to standardize how AI agents record and report their use of media content.