Reuters Editor Says AI Companies Cannot Keep Taking Journalism for Free
By Suad Seferi ·
Artificial intelligence companies cannot continue building commercial products on journalism without paying for the reporting they use, Reuters editor-in-chief Alessandra Galloni has warned. Speaking in Sydney during the 2026 Andrew Olle Media Lecture, Galloni said news organisations need stronger licensing agreements, clearer attribution and more control over how their work is used by AI systems. Her warning goes to the centre of a growing dispute between publishers and technology companies. Newsrooms spend money on reporters, editors, investigations, legal checks and access to sources. AI platforms can then process that work, summarise it and present the information directly to users, often without sending them to the original article. For publishers, that means losing traffic, subscriptions and advertising revenue while their reporting continues to increase the value of someone else’s product. Galloni argued that journalism should be licensed rather than simply absorbed from the open web. The concern is not only about copyright. It is about who will continue paying for original reporting if more people begin receiving news through AI assistants instead of directly from the organisations that produced it. Professional journalism is particularly valuable to AI companies because it is edited, updated and built around identifiable sources. But the financial return rarely flows back to the newsroom. That creates a difficult imbalance. AI systems need credible reporting to produce reliable answers, yet the same systems may weaken the publishers responsible for producing that reporting in the first place. Alessandra Galloni Galloni called on media organisations to cooperate and push for common standards around compensation, attribution and access. Her message was not that journalism should reject AI, but that the relationship must become fairer. Reuters and other major news organisations already use artificial intelligence for tasks such as transcription, translation, data analysis and searching large document collections. These tools can help journalists work faster and examine material that would otherwise take days to process. But they do not replace the reporting itself. An AI system does not build trust with a source, attend a public meeting, confront an official or take responsibility when a published claim is wrong. That distinction is becoming increasingly important as publishers experiment with automation while also facing pressure from falling search traffic and changing audience habits. The danger is that both sides may try to remove the human cost of journalism. Publishers may use AI to reduce newsroom expenses, while technology companies may use journalism to improve AI products without adequately supporting the organisations that created the material. The result could be more content, more summaries and fewer reporters producing original facts. That would leave the information ecosystem dependent on a shrinking pool of journalism while continuing to consume it at scale. The fight over licensing is now expanding beyond the media industry. Authors, artists, photographers and other creators are also challenging the use of their work in AI training, while governments consider new rules around copyright, transparency and compensation. For news organisations, however, the issue is especially urgent. Journalism is not simply content that already exists online. It is a process that costs money and depends on people doing work that AI systems cannot perform on their own. Galloni’s warning reflects a broader reality now facing the media industry: AI may become one of journalism’s most useful tools, but it could also become one of its biggest financial threats. The outcome will depend on whether publishers can secure a fair place in the system before their reporting becomes valuable everywhere except inside their own newsrooms. Source: This article is based on Alessandra Galloni’s 2026 Andrew Olle Media Lecture, published by ABC Australia. The full lecture is available on the ABC website.