AI-generated news should carry ‘nutrition’ labels, thinktank says | AI (artificial intelligence)
AI-generated news should carry ‘nutrition’ labels, thinktank says | AI (artificial intelligence)
Publish Date: 2026-01-30 01:00:00
Source Domain: www.theguardian.com
AI-generated news should carry “nutrition” labels and tech companies must pay publishers for the content they use, according to a left-of-centre thinktank, amid rising use of the technology as a source for current affairs.
The Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) said AI firms were rapidly emerging as the new “gatekeepers” of the internet and intervention was needed to create a healthy AI news environment.
It recommended standardised labels for AI-generated news, showing what information had been used to create those answers, including peer-reviewed studies and articles from professional news organisations. It also urged the establishment of a licensing regime in the UK allowing publishers to negotiate with tech companies over the use of their content in AI news.
“If AI companies are going to profit from journalism and shape what the public sees, they must be required to pay fairly for the news they use and operate under clear rules that protect plurality, trust and the long-term future of independent journalism,” said Roa Powell, senior research fellow at IPPR and the report’s co-author.
The IPPR said work on licensing could begin with the UK’s competition regulator using its new enforcement powers over Google. The Competition and Markets Authority this week proposed giving web publishers and news organisations the power to stop Google scraping their content for its overviews. Collective licensing deals would ensure a wide range of publishers were included, the IPPR added.
Google’s AI overviews now reach 2 billion users a month and approximately a quarter of people use AI to get information, according to the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism.
Copyright law should remain unchanged to ensure a licensing market grows, said the IPPR, while the government should encourage new business models for news that are not dependent on the tech sector, including supporting the BBC and local news providers.
“With the right policies in place, the…
