The New York Times, Agence France-Presse and The Economist have joined a coalition focused on publisher rights in artificial intelligence.
More than 40 publishers joined the group Monday, Reuters reported. The coalition now has more than 80 members across more than 20 countries.
The Standards for Publisher Usage Rights coalition, or SPUR, launched in February to develop common standards for how AI companies use publisher content.
The Atlantic and Brazil’s National Association of Newspapers are among the other new members. Founding members include the Financial Times, BBC and The Associated Press.
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SPUR receives its funding entirely from members. The group is developing technical systems to help publishers track and control how AI companies use their work.
Those systems are also intended to support licensing discussions between publishers and technology companies.
The coalition recently introduced a Content Telemetry Standard. It aims to standardize how AI agents record and report their use of media content.
SPUR says the system could give publishers more consistent information about how their content moves through AI systems. The broader goal is to support compensation for creators and publishers.
Reuters did not provide technical details about how the standard operates. The report also did not identify any AI company that has committed to using it.
Rebecca Grossman-Cohen, the Times’ head of strategic partnerships and chief of staff, welcomed the coalition’s approach.
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“Intellectual property protection and technological advancement can and must co-exist,” she said in a statement.
The expansion comes as publishers continue challenging AI companies over the use of copyrighted journalism.
Earlier this month, USA Today and several affiliated newspapers sued OpenAI for copyright infringement. OpenAI and Microsoft also face copyright claims from authors and news organizations, including the Times.
Those lawsuits remain separate from SPUR’s work. The coalition is focused on creating standards for content usage, tracking and licensing.
That distinction matters because SPUR does not function as an enforcement body. Reuters did not report that the coalition can compel AI companies to follow its standards.
Instead, its strategy depends on creating a common framework that publishers and technology companies can choose to use.
The growing membership gives SPUR a broader base across different markets and news organizations. It also brings several major international publishers into the same standards effort.
However, membership alone does not show whether the system will gain adoption among AI companies.
For publishers, the immediate development is more concrete: SPUR now represents more than 80 members worldwide. It also has a proposed system for reporting how AI agents use media content.
The next question is whether AI companies agree to participate. Reuters reported no such commitments so far.
