dmg media makes AI investment

dmg media says in a first for the company, it has taken an equity stake in ProRata.ai, a Californian start-up whose technology credits and pays copyright holders, on a per-use basis, when their content is used in a Gen-AI response.

In its first commercial partnership with a Gen-AI platform, dmg media says it will give ProRata.ai access to its content for a consumer answer engine to be launched later this year.

Rich Caccappolo, vice chairman, dmg media, said: “dmg media is delighted to have entered a commercial partnership with ProRata, and to become the first UK news publisher to invest in an equity stake in this industry-leading platform.

“The rise of large language models and real-time content scraping represents a material threat to the news industry. There is a critical need to attribute content used by LLMs to generate answers and compensate all content creators for their work.

“ProRata’s platform is a vital first step toward advancing accurate and fair attribution and promoting transparency. It could be the cornerstone of a sustainable economic model for news publishers, giving them the incentive to continue investing in high-quality, informative journalism.”

dmg media says ProRata’s algorithms analyse AI output, measure the value of each piece of contributing content and calculate how much content owners are paid.

This attribution method is designed to ensure that copyright holders share in the upside of Gen-AI by being credited and compensated for their content, the publisher continued.

ProRata has announced partnerships with Guardian Media Group and Sky News, which will make their content available to its AI-search engine.

Earlier this year, ProRata announced partnerships with “The Financial Times,” “The Atlantic,” “Time,” “Fortune,” Universal Music Group, and Axel Springer.