Odd Lots · Monday, August 10, 2026
Meredith Kopit Levien outlined The New York Times's approach to AI compensation, emphasizing a need for a 'fair value exchange' for the content licensed to AI companies. She stated that deals should allow for a sustainable business, grant clear permission with control over usage, and provide compensation for the value derived from their extensive content library. Levien also noted the company is pursuing legal action against entities that have used their content without permission.
“So what a good deals look like in our mind, They can be continuous with a strategy to have a sustainable and growing business for a publisher or anybody producing high quality information. One. Two, we give permission, very clear permission to use our work and then have control in all the uses, all the ways that it might be used. And then third and obviously there is sustainable fair value exchange for the use of that work, and the Times is very open to dealing when we can find those terms.”
“These companies, the lms are spending tens of billions of dollars, sometimes hundreds of billions of dollars on talent, on compute, on power. They should be spending the money that is sufficient value for exchange they are getting from what they call data, which is high quality independent journalism and other kinds of creative work.”