The Interactive Advertising Bureau wants Congress to stop AI companies from using news content without paying for it.
Key Takeaways
- IAB unveiled a draft federal AI Accountability for Publishers Act.
- CEO David Cohen called uncompensated AI scraping “stealing.”
- Puts ad-industry weight behind legislation publishers have pushed at state level.
On Monday, IAB CEO David Cohen unveiled draft federal legislation called the AI Accountability for Publishers Act during the trade group’s annual leadership meeting in Palm Desert, California. The proposed law would protect publishers from AI companies that scrape their content to train models and generate summaries without compensation.
“Free riding isn’t just unfair. It’s stealing,” Cohen told hundreds of advertising executives at the event. “Unless you pay for content that AI bots scrape, you will ruin the economic model that makes the content available in the first place.”
The draft legislation builds on the common law standard of unjust enrichment, arguing that AI companies profit from publishers’ investments without paying for them. Cohen compared the current moment to the collapse of local news in the 2000s and warned that unchecked AI scraping could erode the internet into a “shadow of its former self.”
The IAB has shaped the open web’s business model for 30 years through standardized ad formats and measurement. But AI systems have created a double revenue hit for publishers by scraping content without compensation and redirecting audiences away from their sites.
Cohen framed the internet as splitting between the “human web” and the “agentic web,” calling for the industry to protect the human side. “Unless we act to protect original human-created content, the internet risks devolving into an echo chamber of recycled, low-quality information,” he said.
Hearst Magazines global chief revenue officer Lisa Ryan Howard, speaking on a Sunday panel at the same conference, said publishers must diversify revenue through events and commerce businesses. “This is like a remake,” she said. “This happened with social. I know AI is massively changing all of our lives, but it is something that is manageable, as long as we keep our eye on all of those audiences of ours and create high-quality experiences.”
The IAB plans to circulate the draft legislation with lawmakers on Capitol Hill and secure a sponsor. The full text is available on the IAB website.
