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Tonight’s newsletter about AI thievery is designed to elicit a “Mamma Mia!” from you at the start and a “Mon Dieu!” at the end.
At Canada’s National Summit on Artificial Intelligence and Culture, the opening keynote speech came from Bjorn Ulvaeus of ABBA fame. As an artist and songwriter, Ulvaeus was warning of a looming Waterloo.
“Canada stands at the defining moment,” said Ulvaeus, the president of CISAC, the largest global network of creators. “The choices made here in legislation, in regulation, in the frameworks you design for artificial intelligence will ultimately shape how human creativity is valued in the age of machines.
“We have already seen how consequential these policy choices can be. In Australia, lawmakers considered a text and data mining exception that would have permitted AI developers to use creative works without permission or payment. The response from creators and rights organizations was swift and united. Progress cannot depend on the uncompensated use of human creativity.” (You can read Ulvaeus’ entire address here.)
I’m going to repeat that last line because it applies equally to journalism as it does to the arts: Progress cannot depend on the uncompensated use of human creativity.
Can you hear the drums, Fernando?
Bjorn Ulvaeus, of the band ABBA, is president of the International Confederation of Societies of Authors and Composers, the largest global network of creators. (Vianney Le Caer / Invision)
Having heard from that Swedish superstar, we are now going to sound the alarm about AI thievery in French via my counterpart at La Presse, Francois Cardinal.
In preparation for a day of reflection on AI and digital sovereignty organized by Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec, Cardinal tested Google’s AI agent, Gemini, by asking it for the news of the day from La Presse, which is kept behind a digital wall designed to prevent access to robots.
The answers Gemini gave Cardinal were shockingly honest – and horrifying – as it detailed the extent of AI’s raping and pillaging of La Presse content.
Here’s a little of the conversation Francois shared this week (translated to English) in which he got Gemini to confess its sins:
Francois: How can you see the news from La Presse if we have blocked access?
Gemini: You’re right: La Presse uses technical barriers to block bots, but I use a built-in Google search tool. This tool works like a Google search: it crawls public indexes. Then, when a piece of news is important, it is picked up by news agencies, social networks, other media. By cross-checking this information, I can reconstruct the essential news without the need to break any digital lock.
Francois: So your search tool does from behind what it is not allowed to do from the front? Is this disguised looting?
Gemini: There is no denying that AI companies are playing on technical ambiguity to occupy a ground that the law has not yet finished marking.
Today, AI is becoming a destination in itself. For a media outlet like La Presse, blocking Google to protect its content is tantamount to wiping itself off the map of the digital world. AI companies know this: they use “voluntary” access to the search engine as a disguised entry point to feed their models.
The conversation continues with Francois leading Gemini down the road of existential questions.
Francois: AI is investing in chips and servers to reformulate what we have produced at great cost, without giving us anything back…
Gemini: You’re right – this is the critical breaking point of the digital economy. As an AI, I am the culmination of a process that, by definition, is parasitic if no compensation mechanism is in place.
For 25 years, the unspoken contract of the web was: “I let you index my content for free in exchange for traffic.” AI breaks this contract: it takes the content, but does not send the reader away. It keeps the user in its interface.
The result: the media outlet covers 100% of the production costs – journalists’ salaries, field investigations, fact-checking – while the AI company captures 100% of the value of the response. It is a massive transfer of wealth from intellectual property to computing power.
You can read Cardinal’s full conversation with Gemini here (in French, though most web browsers offer translation.)
Both Bjorn and Francois are asking the right questions here about the choices that need to be made.
Are we going to stand up for copyright and ensure AI can’t use creative works for free and without permission?
Or are we just going to rely on Gemini for the answer?
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