Nick Thompson, CEO of The Atlantic, discusses legal leverage and copyright lawsuits against AI companies.
Disclosure
Thompson: OpenAI deal includes SearchGPT planning sessions and content licensing
“And with OpenAI, we said, hey, here we are, let's talk. And they said, great, let's make a deal. We will pay you for the right to license your content and the right to have RAG. We will include you in sort of planning sessions as we figure out the future of se…”
Insight
Thompson: Paywalls must dynamically guess subscription propensity across traffic sources
“The goal when you have a paywall is if someone's not going to subscribe, you want them to read the article, right? And if someone is going to subscribe, you want them to pay to read the article. And the problem is you can't know. You can't like interview every…”
Prediction Open · timeframe Jan 2031
Thompson: AI publisher compensation legislation won't happen in the US
“Second point of leverage would be legislation, right? It's not going to happen in the United States, you know, but it might happen in Europe. It could happen in Australia, right?”
Disclosure
Thompson: Media CEOs should only comment on industry issues, not politics
“My view is that as the leader of a media organization, if I'm gonna make a public statement on an issue, there's like a pretty limited range. I should make public statements about AI and scraping. Copyright, freedom of speech, right? Freedom of the press, righ…”
Assertion Supported
Thompson: The Atlantic now has 1.46 million subscribers and strong profits
“And now we're at 1.46, right, and we're making, I can't say exactly how much we're making, but we're making good money.”
Disclosure
Thompson: The Atlantic reinvests almost all profits above breakeven into growth
“The way we run it is, the way I think of it, not everybody in the organization agrees, is you have to be profitable and you'll do everything to be profitable. And if you're not going to be profitable, then you make hard choices and all that. If you are going t…”