Hong Kong Free Press joins SPUR Coalition to address AI use of journalism

AI-summarized · Neutrality-checked

Hong Kong Free Press (HKFP) became the first Hong Kong-based news outlet to join the SPUR Coalition, an organization established in February by international media entities including the BBC, Financial Times, Sky News, and the Guardian. The move served as an effort to establish rules, standards, and infrastructure regarding the use of journalism by AI firms. HKFP took this action after finding its reporting was the most cited Hong Kong news dataset in Google’s AI training model in 2023, and amid concerns that AI summaries and chatbots were reducing user referrals to its website. The organization sought to regain control over its archive of approximately 30,000 news stories, which were produced over 11 years with over HK$35 million in reader donations.

Consequences

Through the SPUR Coalition, HKFP will work to establish licensing regimes and technical tools intended to protect intellectual property and ensure transparent compensation for the use of its content. This participation represents a strategic shift from the outlet’s previous reliance on individual tools like Pro Rata and Cloudflare’s AI Crawl Control to address unauthorized content scraping.

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