```

[Senate Hearing 118-439]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]

                                                       S. Hrg. 118-439

                           OVERSIGHT OF A.I.:
                        THE FUTURE OF JOURNALISM

=======================================================================

                                HEARING

                               BEFORE THE

                         SUBCOMMITTEE ON PRIVACY, 
                         TECHNOLOGY, AND THE LAW

                                 OF THE

                       COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY
                          UNITED STATES SENATE

                    ONE HUNDRED EIGHTEENTH CONGRESS

                             SECOND SESSION

                               __________

                            JANUARY 10, 2024

                               __________

                           Serial No. J-118-49

                               __________

         Printed for the use of the Committee on the Judiciary
         
[GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]         

                        www.judiciary.senate.gov
                            www.govinfo.gov
                            
                               __________

                   U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE                    
57-061                  WASHINGTON : 2024                    
          
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------                               

                     COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY

                   RICHARD J. DURBIN, Illinois, Chair

SHELDON WHITEHOUSE, Rhode Island     LINDSEY O. GRAHAM, South Carolina, 
AMY KLOBUCHAR, Minnesota                 Ranking Member
CHRISTOPHER A. COONS, Delaware       CHARLES E. GRASSLEY, Iowa
RICHARD BLUMENTHAL, Connecticut      JOHN CORNYN, Texas
MAZIE K. HIRONO, Hawaii              MICHAEL S. LEE, Utah
CORY A. BOOKER, New Jersey           TED CRUZ, Texas
ALEX PADILLA, California             JOSH HAWLEY, Missouri
JON OSSOFF, Georgia                  TOM COTTON, Arkansas
PETER WELCH, Vermont                 JOHN KENNEDY, Louisiana
LAPHONZA BUTLER, California          THOM TILLIS, North Carolina
                                     MARSHA BLACKBURN, Tennessee

                 Joseph Zogby, Majority Staff Director
                Katherine Nikas, Minority Staff Director

            SUBCOMMITTEE ON PRIVACY, TECHNOLOGY AND THE LAW

                 RICHARD BLUMENTHAL, Connecticut, Chair

AMY KLOBUCHAR, Minnesota             JOSH HAWLEY, Missouri, Ranking 
CHRISTOPHER A. COONS, Delaware           Member
MAZIE K. HIRONO, Hawaii              JOHN CORNYN, Texas
ALEX PADILLA, California             MICHAEL S. LEE, Utah
JON OSSOFF, Georgia                  JOHN KENNEDY, Louisiana
                                     MARSHA BLACKBURN, Tennessee

                David Stoopler, Democratic Chief Counsel
                 John Ehrett, Republican Chief Counsel
                           
                           
                           C O N T E N T S

                              ----------                              

                           OPENING STATEMENTS

                                                                   Page

Blumenthal, Hon. Richard.........................................     1
Hawley, Hon. Josh................................................     3
Klobuchar, Hon. Amy..............................................     4

                               WITNESSES

Coffey, Danielle.................................................     6
    Prepared statement...........................................    30
    Responses to written questions...............................    58
Jarvis, Jeff.....................................................     8
    Prepared statement...........................................    35
LeGeyt, Curtis...................................................     9
    Prepared statement...........................................    43
    Responses to written questions...............................    65
Lynch, Roger.....................................................    11
    Prepared statement...........................................    53
    Responses to written questions...............................    69

                                APPENDIX

Items submitted for the record...................................    29

 
                           OVERSIGHT OF A.I.:
                        THE FUTURE OF JOURNALISM

                              ----------                              

                      WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 10, 2024

                      United States Senate,
   Subcomittee on Privacy, Technology, and the Law,
                                Committee on the Judiciary,
                                                    Washington, DC.
    The Subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 2:05 p.m., in 
Room 226, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Richard 
Blumenthal, Chair of the Subcommittee, presiding.
    Present: Senators Blumenthal [presiding], Klobuchar, 
Hirono, Padilla, Hawley, and Blackburn.

         OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. RICHARD BLUMENTHAL,
          A U.S. SENATOR FROM THE STATE OF CONNECTICUT

    Chair Blumenthal. Welcome everyone. I'm pleased to convene 
the Subcommittee and welcome our witnesses. Welcome everyone 
who's come to hear, and of course, my colleagues from both 
sides of the aisle, for a hearing that is critical to our 
democracy. It's critical to the future of journalism in the 
United States because local reporting is the lifeblood of our 
democracy, and local reporting by newspapers and broadcast 
stations are in existential crisis.
    It is, in fact, a perfect storm. The result of increasing 
cost, declining revenue, and exploding disinformation. A lot of 
the cause of this perfect storm is in fact technologies like 
artificial intelligence--not new, not original for me to 
observe it--but it is literally eating away at the lifeblood of 
our democracy, which as we all know is essential to local jobs, 
local accountability, local awareness, and knowledge. 
Everything from obituaries to the planning and zoning 
commissions.
    You can't get it anywhere else. National news you can buy 
by the yard or by the word, but local reporting is truly the 
result of sweat and tears and sometimes even blood of local 
reporters. What we're seeing, and it's a stark fact about 
American journalism in existential crisis, is the decline and 
potential death of local reporting. As a result of that perfect 
storm, local papers are closing at a staggering rate. A third 
of our newspapers have been lost in the last two decades.
    I don't need to tell anyone here that some of the oldest 
newspapers in the country, like the Hartford Courant, have 
closed their newsrooms, and it is a national tragedy, a painful 
and traumatic time for reporters, editors, and their industry, 
and a deep danger for our democracy.
    Hedge funds are buying those papers, not for the news they 
can communicate, but often for the real estate that they own. 
They are publishing weekly instead of daily, and they are 
buying out reporting staffs, sometimes firing them. Millions of 
Americans now live in a news desert where there's no local 
paper, and that's especially true for rural populations and 
communities of color. There's an equity aspect to this 
challenge as well.
    For any of us on this panel, we know the importance of 
local news, but so should people who live in those communities, 
because just as local police and fire services are the first 
responders, local reporters are often the first informers, and 
that information is no less important to them than fire and 
police service in the long-term.
    The rise of Big Tech has been directly responsible for the 
decline in local news, and it is largely the cause of that 
perfect storm, accelerating and expanding the destruction of 
local reporting. First, Meta, Google and OpenAI are using the 
hard work of newspapers and authors to train their AI models 
without compensation or credit. Adding insult to injury, those 
models are then used to compete with newspapers and broadcast, 
cannibalizing readership and revenue from the journalistic 
institutions that generate the content in the first place.
    As The New York Times recent lawsuit against OpenAI and 
Microsoft shows, those AI models will even essentially 
plagiarize articles and directly permit readers to evade 
paywalls to access protected content free of charge. I realize 
that those claims and allegations are yet to be contended or 
concluded in court, but they are certainly more than plausible.
    Second, the models may also misidentify or misattribute 
statements about media outlet content or endorsement of a 
product, and the result is more rampant misinformation and 
disinformation online and damage to the brand and credibility 
of those media outlets. There are legitimate fears that AI will 
directly replace journalists. The experiments we've seen with 
fake reporters are a breach of trust. It's never a substitute 
for local reporters in local newsrooms, broadcasters, 
journalists who reflect their community and talk to their 
neighbors.
    Our purpose here must be to determine how we can ensure 
that reporters and readers reap the benefits of AI and avoid 
the pitfalls. That's been one of the themes of our hearings, 
and another has been that we need to move more quickly than we 
did on social media and learn from our mistakes in the delay 
there.
    Once again, we need to learn from the mistakes of that 
failure to oversee social media and adopt standards. I think 
there are some that maybe we can form a consensus around, just 
as Senator Hawley and I have on the framework that we've 
proposed.
    First, on licensing: guaranteeing that newspapers and 
broadcasters are given credit, financially and publicly, for 
reporting and other content they provide. Second, on an AI 
framework, such as we've proposed, requiring transparency about 
the limits and use of AI models, including disclosures when 
copyrighted material is used as provided for in our framework 
now. But we may need to expand on it and make it more explicit.
    Third, on Section 230, clarifying that Section 230 does not 
apply to AI. Again, as Senator Hawley and I have proposed in 
our legislation, to create the right incentives for companies 
to develop trustworthy products. Finally--not really finally, 
but fourth, updating our antitrust laws to stop Big Tech's 
monopolistic business practices in advertising that undercut 
newspapers. I want to thank my colleague, Senator Klobuchar, 
and Senator Lee, for their work on legislation that I've joined 
as a co-sponsor.
    We're fortunate to have an extraordinary panel today. I 
want to thank all of you for being here, and now turn to the 
Ranking Member for his comments.

                STATEMENT OF HON. JOSH HAWLEY, 
           A U.S. SENATOR FROM THE STATE OF MISSOURI

    Senator Hawley. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Thank 
you for convening this hearing. The first hearing of the year, 
but the latest in a series of hearings that Senator Blumenthal 
and I have been able to host together. Senator Blumenthal has 
just done tremendous, tremendous work chairing this Committee, 
and I've started now to notice a pattern. This is the fifth or 
sixth hearing I think we've had, and I've noticed now a pretty 
decided pattern.
    It goes something like this: You have on the one hand all 
of the AI cheerleaders who say that AI is going to be 
wonderful. AI is going to be life changing; it's going to be 
world changing; it's going to be the best thing that has ever 
happened to the human race, or something to that effect. Then 
you have a group of people who have concerns, and they say, 
well, you know, I don't know. I mean, what's AI going to do to 
jobs? What's AI going to mean for my privacy? What's AI going 
to mean for my kids?
    Here's the pattern I've noticed over a year: almost 
everybody who takes the AI cheerleading stance is here in this 
building. Then when you leave the confines of this building and 
the lobbyists who inhabit it, when you go out and actually talk 
to real people, working real jobs, you find the second set of 
concerns. I have yet to talk to a Missourian who is an 
enthusiastic, no holds barred cheerleader for AI. Not one. 
There probably is someone somewhere, but they haven't talked to 
me yet.
    What, I hear over, and over, and over from workaday people 
who are working their job, raising their kids, trying to just, 
you know, keep it going--what they say over and over is, I 
don't know about this. I don't know what this is going to mean 
for my kids online. I don't know what this is going to mean for 
my job in the future. I just--I don't know. I have concerns. 
They also usually say, I sure really wish that Congress would 
do something about this.
    That leads me to the second observation, the second pattern 
that I have noticed in this last year. And that is, while 
there's a lot of talk about the need for Congress to act, we're 
beginning to slip into a familiar pattern whereby the biggest 
companies who increasingly control this technology, just like 
they've controlled social media, don't want us to act and are 
willing to expend any amount of resources, money, time, and 
effort, influence to make sure we don't.
    Senator Blumenthal mentioned our bipartisan bill. That 
would just--a very modest bill, if I may say, that would just 
clarify that AI-generated tools are not entitled to the Section 
230 protections. Very modest. Do you know when we had AI 
executives sitting right here in this room, and we asked them 
directly, do you think Section 230 covers your model in your 
industry? They said, no. Senator Blumenthal and I wrote it up. 
I said, well, good, good. This is consensus. Let's pass this. I 
went to the floor to try to pass this bill in December and 
immediately was blocked and objected to.
    The same story we've been hearing for years from the 
technology companies. It's always, theoretically, we should put 
safeguards in place for real people. But when you come to do 
it, it's, oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, we can't. It's too soon. 
It's too much. It's too quick. What it really means is it would 
interfere with our profits. I mean, that's what they really 
mean. We cannot allow that pattern to continue with AI.
    That's the final thing I noticed is this: From the hearings 
and the information we've gathered, is AI is supposed to be 
new, but it really is contributing to what is now a familiar, 
familiar story, which is the monopolization in this country of 
information, of data, of large swaths of our economy. AI is 
increasingly controlled by two, three, four of the biggest 
companies, not just in this country, the biggest companies in 
the world. Apropos of today's subject to this hearing, I think 
we have to ask ourselves, ``Do we want all the news and 
information in this Nation to be controlled by two or three 
companies?'' I certainly don't. I certainly don't.
    So, I think we've got to ask ourselves, what are we going 
to do, practically, to make sure that normal people--whether 
they are journalists, whether they're bloggers, or whether it's 
just the working mom at home--what they can do to protect their 
work product, their information, their data? How are we going 
to make sure they are able to keep control of it, how they're 
able to vindicate their rights--because they do have rights, 
and they should have rights--and it shouldn't be that just 
because the biggest companies in the world want to gobble up 
your data, they should be able to do it, and you know what? Too 
bad; we're all just supposed to live with it.
    So, I think we've got a tall task in front of us. I salute 
Senator Blumenthal, again, for holding these hearings, and I 
hope that we'll be able to drive toward clarity and then toward 
solutions, because that's what the American people deserve. 
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Chair Blumenthal. Thanks, Senator Hawley. I'm going to turn 
to Senator Klobuchar, who's been a leader in this area. As you 
know, she is the Chairwoman of the Subcommittee on Antitrust of 
the Judiciary Committee.

               STATEMENT OF HON. AMY KLOBUCHAR, 
           A U.S. SENATOR FROM THE STATE OF MINNESOTA

    Senator Klobuchar. Thank you very much, Senator Blumenthal. 
Thank you for your work, and outlining some solutions, which I 
appreciated, and Senator Hawley as well. We have the bill to 
ban deepfake political ads, which is getting growing support. 
I'm hopeful if there is a package on AI, that that will be 
included, and of course, Senator Hirono is with us, who's been 
there from day one on these issues.
    This is personal for me. As many of you know, my dad was a 
journalist. He spent his career as a reporter, a columnist. He 
also had a local radio station, local TV show. When he retired 
in 1995, he had written 8,400 columns and 12 million words, and 
he did it all without AI. I will note, as a timely matter, he 
wrote 23 books, including one called ``Will the Vikings Ever 
Win the Super Bowl,'' which is sadly still relevant after this 
season.
    So, local news. Senator Blumenthal really laid out the 
problems and what we've seen with the closure of newspapers. We 
note this is how so many people, whether it is local radio, and 
I keep adding local TV as well, this is where they get their 
disaster alerts. This is when they find out if there's floods 
in Missouri. This is how they find out what the fire cleanup is 
in Hawaii. This is how they find out if a blizzard is coming in 
Minnesota. It's also where they find out their local football 
scores, and if a business is opening. And it is, yes, how 
finely city councils get reported on and what's covered. If 
this goes away, it literally frays at the connections in our 
democracies.
    So, what's happened? Diagnosis: the closure because of ad 
revenue. Not only because of that, but a lot because of that. 
In one quarter, 3 months in October, Google reported--this is 
last year--more than $59 billion in advertising revenue, one 
quarter, in a single 3-month period. When you look at what's 
happened with a newspaper's advertising revenue in just one, 
from 2008 to 2020, went down from $37 billion to $9 billion. I 
am very concerned that these trends will only worsen with the 
rise of Generative AI.
    So that is why in addition to the solutions that Senator 
Blumenthal--the top ones on licensing and the like that we need 
to look at--we can finally include some version, I hope, of the 
bill that Senator Kennedy and I have led for years, the 
Journalism Competition and Preservation Act.
    We know that just recently, Google negotiated an agreement 
in Canada after a similar bill had passed in Canada, which is 
going to mean a major shift for local news there, which will 
mean $74 million annually to those news organizations. We know 
that in Australia, where a similar bill passed, $140 million 
has shifted to the content providers, to the people who are 
actually doing the work, who are reporting the stories on the 
front line.
    So to me, that is a market-based way--by having negotiation 
of what the actual rates are, it is a market-based way to 
resolve this. It's why people like Senator Cruz support this 
bill. It is not some bill that is supported by one party or the 
other. It's been bipartisan from the very beginning. I'm 
hopeful that that will be considered as one of our solutions to 
all of this.
    Of course, we're also very concerned, as was noted by 
Senator Blumenthal, about these fake images of news anchors, 
people who are trusted, in addition to the politicians. It's 
not just movie stars, it's not just Tom Hanks and Taylor Swift 
as cool as they are. It's also going to be the local news 
anchor that maybe people haven't heard of nationally, but is 
trusted in Rochester, Minnesota.
    That's why I think this is such a timely hearing, and I 
want to thank Senator Blumenthal for having it as well as 
Senator Hawley.
    Chair Blumenthal. Thank you. Thanks, Senator Klobuchar. 
Just for the record, our local news anchors in Connecticut are 
pretty cool too. And you'll take that back to them, Mr. LeGeyt. 
Thank you.
    I want to introduce the witnesses, then we'll swear them in 
and ask for your opening statements. Danielle Coffey, welcome, 
is president and CEO of News Media Alliance, which represents 
more than 2,200 news and magazine media outlets worldwide, 
serving the largest cities and smallest towns, as well as 
national and international publication. She's a member of the 
board of directors at the National Press Club Journalism 
Institute.
    Professor Jeff Jarvis is the Tow Professor of Journalism at 
CUNY's Newmark School of Journalism. He's the author of six 
books, including, ``The Gutenberg Parenthesis: The Age of Print 
and Its Lessons for the Age of the Internet,'' and later this 
year, preview of coming attractions, ``The Web We Weave: Why We 
Must Reclaim the Internet from Moguls, Misanthropes, and Moral 
Panic.'' He co-hosts two podcasts, ``This Week in Google'' and 
``AI Inside.''
    Curtis LeGeyt, is president and chief executive officer of 
the National Association of Broadcasters. That organization is 
the premier advocacy association for America's broadcasters. It 
advances radio and television interests in legislative, 
regulatory, and public affairs.
    Roger Lynch is the CEO of Conde Nast, the global media 
company that creates and distributes content through its iconic 
brands including The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Vogue, Wired, GQ, 
Bon Appetit. Prior to his current position at Conde Nast, he 
served as CEO of the music streaming service Pandora and also 
was the founding CEO of Sling TV. If you would please rise, I 
will administer the oath.
    [Witnesses are sworn in.]
    Chair Blumenthal. Thank you. Ms. Coffey, if you would 
begin, please.

     STATEMENT OF MS. DANIELLE COFFEY, PRESIDENT AND CEO, 
            NEWS MEDIA ALLIANCE, ARLINGTON, VIRGINIA

    Ms. Coffey. Thank you, Chairman Blumenthal, Ranking Member 
Hawley, and Members of the Subcommittee. Thank you for inviting 
me here to testify here today on AI and the future of 
journalism. My name is Danielle Coffey, and I'm president and 
CEO of the News Media Alliance, representing 2,200 news 
publications, magazines, digital-only outlets, some 
publications that started before the Constitutional Convention, 
such as the Hartford Courant.
    My members produce quality journalistic and creative 
content that seeks to inform, educate, and connect with readers 
and enrich their daily lives. We cover natural disasters, 
conflict zones, school boards, city halls, town halls, 
entertainment and the arts, and matters of public interest. We 
invest a significant amount of financial and human capital to 
serve our readers across the country.
    Our publications adhere to principles and processes that 
support verification, accuracy, and fidelity to facts. We abide 
by standards and codes of conduct and provide readers a voice 
through correction policies to ensure accuracy and reporting. 
Unfortunately, the same accountability is not seen across the 
rest of the internet. Without proper safeguards, we cannot rely 
on a common set of facts that promote healthy public discourse. 
Without quality reporting, we cannot have an informed 
electorate and functional society.
    Generative Artificial Intelligence, GAI, could create an 
even greater risk to the information ecosystem with 
inaccuracies and hallucinations, if not curbed with quality 
content produced by news publications. This risk will become 
worse as the economic decline of our industry accelerates. Our 
revenue has been cut in half.
    Over the last 10 years, demand for our content has grown 
the same amount over the same period of time in the opposite 
direction. This lack of return is because dominant distributors 
of our news content are scraping publications, websites, and 
selling portions for engagement and personal information to 
target users with advertising.
    Over the last several years, there have been countless 
studies, investigations, and litigation by the DOJ and the FTC 
in the past two administrations that have found anti-
competitive conduct by the monopoly distributors of news 
content. This proves the direct nexus between anti-competitive 
conduct and the steep decline of financial revenue return to 
news publications, leading to a dramatic shortfall of the 
revenue that's needed to invest in news gathering and hiring 
journalists.
    We are deeply appreciative of Senators Klobuchar and 
Kennedy for their relentless leadership on the Journalism 
Competition and Preservation Act, which addresses this 
marketplace imbalance, and we thank this Committee for 
overwhelmingly passing the legislation last July.
    This marketplace imbalance will only be increased by GAI. 
An analysis that the N/MA commissioned in cases before the 
courts, it shows evidence of copyright-protective, expressive 
works being taken from behind paywalls without authorization, 
and used repeatedly in modeling, model training, processing, 
and display.
    In addition to massive amounts of content used in training 
GAI output, results to users' inquiries often contain 
summaries, excerpts, and even full verbatim copies of articles 
written and fact-checked by human journalists. These outputs 
compete in the same market with the same audience, serving the 
same purpose as the original articles that feed the algorithms 
in the first place. Because these uses go far beyond the 
guardrail set by the courts, this is not considered fair use 
under current copyright law.
    To be clear, news publishers are not opposed to AI. We want 
to help developers realize their potential in a responsible 
way. N/MA's members are by and large willing to come to the 
table and discuss licensing terms and licensing solutions to 
facilitate reliable, updated access to trustworthy and 
authoritative content.
    A constructive solution will benefit all interested parties 
and society at large and avoid protracted uncertainty in the 
courts. Some GAI developers are good actors and seek licensing 
agreements with news publications, and we applaud their 
efforts.
    In addition to encouraging such licensing practices, there 
are other issues that Congress can address around transparency, 
copyright, accountability, and competition that we have 
submitted for the record.
    The Fourth Estate has served a valuable role in this 
country for centuries, calling on governments and civic leaders 
to act responsibly in their positions of power. Local news, 
especially, has uncovered and reported on events around the 
country that keep readers informed, educated, and engaged in 
their communities.
    We simply cannot let the free press be disregarded at the 
expense of these new and exciting technologies. Both can exist 
in harmony, and both can thrive. We must ensure that for the 
future of our country and the future of our society. Thank you 
for the opportunity to participate, and I look forward to 
questions.
    [The prepared statement of Ms. Coffey appears as a 
submission for the record.]
    Chair Blumenthal. Thank you, Ms. Coffey. Professor Jarvis.

       STATEMENT OF PROFESSOR JEFF JARVIS, TOW PROFESSOR

              OF JOURNALISM, CUNY GRADUATE SCHOOL

            OF JOURNALISM, BASKING RIDGE, NEW JERSEY

    Professor Jarvis. Thank you so much for this opportunity 
and invitation. I've been a journalist for 50 years, and a 
journalism professor for the last 18 of those. I'd like to 
begin with three lessons about the history of news and 
copyright that I've learned from researching my book, ``The 
Gutenberg Parenthesis.''
    First, America's 1790 Copyright Act protected only maps, 
charts, and books. Newspapers were not covered by the statute 
until 1909. Second, the Post Office Act of 1792 allowed 
newspapers to exchange copies for free, enabling so-called 
``scissors editor''--an actual job title--to reprint articles, 
thus creating a network for news, and with it, a nation. To 
this day, journalists read, learn from, and repurpose facts 
from each other. The question before us today is whether the 
machine has similar rights to read and learn.
    Third, a century ago, when print media faced their first 
competitor, radio, newspapers were inhospitable, limiting 
broadcasters to two daily updates, excluding radio from 
congressional press galleries, and even forbidding on-air 
commentators from discussing an event until 12 hours after the 
fact. They accused radio of stealing content and revenue. They 
warned radio would endanger democracy, as they have since to 
television, the internet, and now AI.
    Today, I prefer to focus on the good that might come from 
news collaborating with this new technology. First, a caveat. 
Large language models have no sense of fact and should not be 
used where facts matter, as some learn the hard way. Still, AI 
presents many opportunities. For example, AI is excellent at 
translation. News organizations could use it to present their 
news internationally. AI is good at summarizing specific 
documents. That is what Google's NotebookLM does, helping 
writers and journalists organize their research. AI can analyze 
more text than any one reporter.
    I advised one editor to have citizens record, say, 100 
school board meetings so the technology could transcribe them 
and then answer questions about how many boards are discussing, 
say, banning books. I'm fascinated with the idea that AI could 
extend literacy, helping people who are intimidated by writing 
to tell and illustrate their own stories.
    A task force of academics from the Modern Language 
Association concluded recently that AI could help students with 
word play, analyzing writing, and overcoming writer's block. AI 
now enables anyone to write computer code. As a tech executive 
told me in an AI podcast that I co-host, the hottest 
programming language on planet Earth right now is English.
    Finally, I see business opportunities for publishers to put 
large language models in front of their content to allow 
readers to enter into dialog with that content. I just spoke 
with one entrepreneur I know who's working on a business like 
that. This morning, I talked to an executive at Schibsted, the 
very good Norwegian newspaper company, and they're working on 
something similar.
    All these opportunities and more are put at risk if we 
fence off the open internet. Common Crawl is a foundation that 
for 16 years has archived the web, 250 billion pages and 10 
petabytes made available to scholars for free, yielding 10,000 
research papers. I'm disturbed to learn that The New York Times 
demanded that the entire history of its content, including that 
which had been available for free, be erased.
    Now, when I learned that my books were included in Books3, 
a data set used to train AI, I was delighted, for I write not 
only to make money, but also to spread ideas. What happens to 
our information ecosystem and our democracy when all 
authoritative news retreats behind paywalls, available only to 
privileged citizens and giant corporations that can afford to 
pay.
    I understand the economic plight of my industry. I've been 
an executive in this industry. I've run a center for 
entrepreneurial journalism. I understand the urgency. But 
instead of debating protectionist legislation sought by 
lobbyists for a struggling industry, I hope we also have a 
discussion about journalism's moral obligation to an informed 
democracy. Please let us rethink copyright for this age. In my 
next book, ``The Web We Weave,'' I ask technologists, users, 
scholars, media, and governments to enter into covenants of 
mutual obligation for the future of the internet, and by 
extension, AI.
    Today, I propose to you as government, to promise, first, 
to protect the rights of speech and assembly that have been 
made possible by the internet. Please base decisions that 
affect internet rights on rational proof of harms, not media's 
moral panic. Do not splinter the internet along national 
borders and encourage and enable new competition and openness 
rather than entrenching incumbent interests through regulatory 
capture. In some, I seek a Hippocratic Oath for the internet. 
First, do no harm.
    [The prepared statement of Professor Jarvis appears as a 
submission for the record.]
    Chair Blumenthal. Thanks, Professor. Mr. LeGeyt.

       STATEMENT OF MR. CURTIS LEGEYT, PRESIDENT AND CEO,

             NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF BROADCASTERS,

                         WASHINGTON, DC

    Mr. LeGeyt. Good afternoon, Chairman Blumenthal, Ranking 
Member Hawley, and Members of the Subcommittee. My name is 
Curtis LeGeyt. I'm the president and CEO of the National 
Association of Broadcasters. I'm proud to testify today on 
behalf of our thousands of local television and radio station 
members who serve your constituents every day.
    Study after study shows that local broadcasters are the 
most trusted source of news and information. Our investigative 
reports received countless awards for exemplifying the 
importance and impact of journalism as a service to the 
community. This includes WTNH News 8 in New Haven, which 
received an Edward R. Murrow Award for its reporting on child 
sex trafficking in the State, and KMOX Radio and KMOV-TV in St. 
Louis, which were also recently honored with Murrow Awards for 
their accurate and heartfelt reporting of a deadly school 
shooting.
    Stories like these are the antidote to the misinformation 
and disinformation that thrives online. Broadcasters will build 
on this trust by embracing new AI tools that will help our 
journalists, particularly when it comes to delivering breaking 
news and emergency information.
    For example, one broadcaster is piloting a tool that would 
use AI to quickly cull through inbound tips from email and 
social media to produce recommendations they can verify and 
turn into impactful stories. Other broadcasters are using AI to 
translate their stories into other languages to better serve 
diverse audiences. When AI can help these journalists, real 
people, perform their jobs and their communities, we welcome 
it.
    However, this Subcommittee should be mindful of three 
significant risks that Generative AI poses to broadcast 
newsrooms across the country. First, the use of broadcasters' 
news content in AI models without authorization diminishes our 
audience trust and our reinvestment in local news. Broadcasters 
have already seen numerous examples where content created by 
our journalists has been ingested and regurgitated by AI bots 
with little or no attribution.
    For example, when a well-known AI platform was recently 
prompted to provide the latest news in Parkersburg, West 
Virginia, it generated outputs, copied nearly word for word 
from WTAP-TV's website. The station did not grant permission 
for that use, nor were they even made aware of it.
    Not only are broadcasters losing out on that compensation, 
but this unauthorized usage risks undermining trust as stations 
lose control over how their content is used, and whether it's 
integrated with other unverified information. All of the 
concerns that drive Senators Klobuchar, Kennedy, and this 
Committee's work on the Journalism Competition and Preservation 
Act, are exacerbated by the emergence of Generative AI.
    Second, the use of AI to doctor, manipulate, or 
misappropriate the likeness of trusted radio or television 
personalities risk spreading misinformation or even 
perpetuating fraud. One example, a recent video clip of a 
routine discussion between two broadcast TV anchors, was 
manipulated to create a hateful, racist, antisemitic rant.
    Univision's Jorge Ramos, one of the most respected figures 
in American journalism, has repeatedly been a victim of AI 
tools, appropriating and manipulating his voice and image to 
advertise all kinds of unauthorized goods and services. We 
appreciate the attention of Senators Coons, Blackburn, 
Klobuchar, and Tillis to this growing and significant problem, 
which should be addressed in balance with the First Amendment.
    Finally, the rising prevalence of deepfakes makes it 
increasingly burdensome for both our newsrooms and users to 
identify and distinguish legitimate copyrighted broadcast 
content from the unvetted and potentially inaccurate content 
being generated by AI. To give a recent illustration, following 
the recent October 7th terrorist attacks on Israel, fake photos 
and videos reached an unprecedented level on social media in a 
matter of minutes. Of the thousands of videos that one 
broadcast network sifted through to report on the attacks, only 
10 percent of them were authentic and usable.
    As, I document my written testimony, broadcasters across 
the country have launched significant new initiatives to 
bolster the vetting process of the content that is aired on our 
stations. These efforts are costly, and the problem grows more 
complex by the day.
    In conclusion, America's broadcasters are extremely proud 
of the role we play in serving your constituents, and we are 
eager to embrace AI when it can be harnessed to enhance that 
critical role. However, as we have seen in the cautionary tale 
of Big Tech, exploitation of new technologies can undermine 
local news.
    This Subcommittee is wise to keep a close eye on AI as well 
as the way our current laws are applied to it. Thank you again 
for inviting me to testify today. I look forward to your 
questions.
    [The prepared statement of Mr. LeGeyt appears as a 
submission for the record.]
    Chair Blumenthal. Thank you, Mr. LeGeyt. Mr. Lynch.

        STATEMENT OF MR. ROGER LYNCH, CEO, CONDE NAST, 
                       NEW YORK, NEW YORK

    Mr. Lynch. Thank you, Chair of Blumenthal, Ranking Member 
Hawley, and Members of the Subcommittee. Thank you very much 
for inviting me to participate today in the critical discussion 
about AI and future of journalism.
    My name is Roger Lynch, and I'm the CEO of Conde Nast. 
Conde Nast iconic brands and publications include The New 
Yorker, Vogue, Vanity Fair, Wired, Architectural Digest, Conde 
Nast Traveler, GQ, Bon Appetit, and many more, including, I 
might add, Tatler, which was first published in the UK in 1709.
    Our mission is to produce culture-defining exceptional 
journalism and creative content, and this purpose is evident in 
our output that only humans can make, together with rigorous 
standards in fact-checking that can be produced. The result is 
stories that change society for the better, information that 
helps people make decisions in their daily lives, and content 
that creates an informed and empowered electorate.
    As an example, this is what The New Yorker has done for 
over a hundred years; from the publishing of John Hersey's 1946 
account of the survivors of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, to 
the serialized chapters of Rachel Carson's, ``Silent Spring,'' 
which helped launch the modern environmental movement in 1962, 
to more recently, Patrick Radden Keefe's exposes on the Sackler 
family's ruthless marketing of OxyContin, the drug that 
profited billions from people's addictions.
    I have long experience leading companies through times of 
great technological change. You could say it's in my DNA, and 
Generative AI is certainly bringing about such change, and is 
already demonstrating tremendous potential to make the world a 
better place. But Gen AI cannot replace journalism.
    Journalism is fundamentally a human pursuit, and it plays 
an essential and irreplaceable role in our society and our 
democracy. It takes reporters with grit, integrity, ambition, 
and human creativity to develop the stories that allow free 
markets, free speech, and freedom itself, to thrive.
    In each business that I've led, successful new businesses 
were built on a foundation of licensing content rights. 
Licensing allowed distributors to work together with content 
creators to innovate new and better consumer experiences and 
generate profits that were invested in creating more great 
content.
    I'm here today because congressional intervention is needed 
to make clear that Gen AI companies must also take licenses to 
utilize publisher content for use with Gen AI. Unfortunately, 
currently deployed Gen AI tools have been built with stolen 
goods. Gen AI companies copy and display our content without 
permission or compensation in order to build massive commercial 
businesses that directly compete with us.
    Big Tech companies argue that this is fair use. That their 
machines are just learning from reading our content just as 
humans learn, and that no licenses are required for that. This 
is a false analogy. Gen AI models do not learn like humans do. 
They maintain complete copies of the works they train on, our 
content, and output its substance while keeping 100 percent of 
the value for themselves and training consumers to come to them 
for information, not to us, depriving us of essential customer 
relationships.
    Fair use is designed to allow criticism, parody, 
scholarship, research, and news reporting. The law is clear 
that it is not fair use when there is an adverse effect on the 
market for the copyrighted material. It is that market that 
creates the incentive to invest and innovate in content. In 
that way, the market supports journalism and innovation in the 
long run. Fair use is not intended to simply enrich technology 
companies that prefer not to pay.
    Moreover, Gen AI technology enables misinformation on an 
unprecedented scale. In the wrong hands, Gen AI can generate 
outputs that are customized for individuals, making 
misinformation in all forms; fake photographs, audio, video, 
and documents look real.
    Widely available Gen AI tools hallucinate and generate 
misstatements that are sometimes attributed to real 
publications like ours, damaging our brands. Americans can't 
possibly spend all of their time determining what's true and 
what's false. Instead, they may stop trusting any source of 
information with devastating consequences.
    Luckily, there is a path forward. That's good policy, its 
good business, and it's already the law. Licensed and 
compensated use of publisher content for both training and 
output. This will ensure a sustainable ecosystem in which high 
quality content continues to be produced by brands consumers 
trust. This will also ensure that information comes from many 
sources without Big Tech companies as gatekeepers. Licensing 
will support a sustainable future.
    In conclusion, we urge Congress to take immediate action to 
clarify that the use of publisher content for both Gen AI 
training and output must be licensed and compensated. The time 
to act is now and the stakes are nothing short of the continued 
viability of journalism.
    Thank you very much for your work on these important 
issues.
    [The prepared statement of Mr. Lynch appears as a 
submission for the record.]
    Chair Blumenthal. Thank you very much, Mr. Lynch. And let 
me begin where you ended to say that what we're proposing 
really is to clarify. The argument could be made, I think, that 
the law now requires this kind of licensing, but I think you 
would agree with me that the costs of enforcing those rights 
through litigation, the financial costs, the delay, the cost 
and time, make it often an impractical or less effective remedy 
than is needed and deserved. Is that the thrust of your 
testimony?
    Mr. Lynch. Yes, Senator. If the big AI companies had agreed 
with that position, we would be able to negotiate arrangements 
with them. Unfortunately, they do not agree with that. They do 
not agree that they should have to be paying for this, and they 
believe that it is covered under fair use, and hence, the 
lawsuits that you've already seen starting.
    Chair Blumenthal. In a blog post, I believe, from OpenAI 
reported very recently, within the last 24 hours or so, the 
reference was made, in fact, to ongoing negotiations proceeding 
The New York Times lawsuit, and possibly other negotiations are 
ongoing. But in the long-term, those kinds of individual ad hoc 
agreements maybe will be unavailing to the smaller newspapers 
or broadcast stations that don't have the resources of The New 
York Times. Correct?
    Mr. Lynch. Certainly. That would be a major concern, is 
that the amount of time it would take to litigate appeal, go 
back to the courts, appeal, maybe ultimately make it to the 
Supreme Court to settle. Between now and then, there'd be many, 
many media companies that would go out of business.
    Chair Blumenthal. One of the core principles of the 
framework that Senator Hawley and I have proposed is record 
keeping and transparency. Developers ought to be required to 
disclose essential information about the training, data, and 
safety of AI models to users and other companies.
    Ms. Coffey, you make the point that this is important for 
newspapers. The AI companies have been intensely secretive 
about where they get their data, but we know based on even the 
limited transparency that's available to us, that they use 
copyright material, and it's the bedrock for many of their 
models. For example, Meta and other companies use a data base 
called Books3, which is a collection of nearly 200,000 pirated 
books.
    That's not public information. That's theft, in my view. 
I'm a former prosecutor, so I don't use that term lightly, but 
seems to me that's the right term for it. Part of the problem 
is that AI companies are using this hard work, not just the 
sweat, and tears, and sometimes blood, but also the financial 
investment that is made to produce news. It doesn't appear 
magically, it's not out of thin air. It's an investment, and 
the kind of lack of transparency makes it harder for you to 
protect your rights. Is that correct?
    Ms. Coffey. That is correct. And we found the same thing 
with news media. It's 5 of the top 10 sites that are used by 
C4, which is the curated, more responsible dataset that train 
the models of Common Crawl. We found that 5 of the top 10 were 
news media sites because it is quality, it is reliable, it is 
vetted, and fact-based.
    Then, we would agree that licensing would be the best 
marketplace solution so that we can avoid protracted 
litigation. And in order to do that, we need to know how 
they're using our content. So, a searchable data base would be 
something that we would recommend.
    There are other options and ways to do that, and I know 
that there's legislation that we're supportive of that would 
identify how our content is being used, because any sort of 
tagging that we do, any authentication, we work with Adobe and 
others, but it's stripped whenever they take our content, and 
it doesn't follow the content through to the output. We don't 
know how our content is actually being used, and therefore we 
can't enforce, and it's difficult to negotiate if we don't have 
that information. There's different versions that might work, 
but we would be very supportive of that so that we can enforce 
our rights.
    Chair Blumenthal. I would be very interested in more 
specifics from all the witnesses. We may not have time today to 
explore all the technical details, but obviously those details 
are important. I just want to emphasize the point that, I 
think, really all of you have made, which is there's great 
promise. There are tremendous potential benefits to using AI.
    For example, in investigative reporting, to go through 
court files or documents, discovery, depositions, all kinds of 
stuff that can be more effectively and efficiently explored and 
summarized by AI. But we also need to be mindful of the perils. 
We're going to have 5-minute rounds of questions, and I'll turn 
to the Ranking Member, Senator Hawley.
    Senator Hawley. Thanks again, Mr. Chairman. Thanks to all 
the witnesses for being here. Mr. Lynch, if I could just come 
back to you because I was struck by your comment that the 
problem with Generative AI as it exists currently, it's been 
built with stolen goods. Let's just talk a little bit about the 
sort of content licensing framework that you would favor.
    Can, you give us a sort of a sketch of what that would look 
like, something that protects existing copyright law, something 
that you think would be workable? I'm not asking you to write 
the statute for us----
    Mr. Lynch. Sure, sure.
    Senator Hawley [continuing]. But just maybe give us a 
thumbnail overview.
    Mr. Lynch. I think quite simply, if Congress could clarify 
that the use of our content and other publisher content for 
training and output of AI models is not fair use, then the free 
market will take care of the rest. Just like it has in the 
music industry where I worked, and film and television, sports 
rights. It can enable private negotiations, and you know, in 
the music industry where you have--you think about millions of 
artists, millions of ultimate consumers, consuming that 
content.
    There have been models that have been set up, ASCAP, BMI, 
CISAC, GMR, these collective rights organizations to simplify 
the licensing of that content. And the nice thing about that is 
it doesn't take a company the size of Conde Nast or The New 
York Times to create these licensing deals. These organizations 
can do it for all content producers.
    You know, fundamentally we think a simple fix or 
clarification that use of content for training and output of AI 
models is not fair use, the market will take care of the rest.
    Senator Hawley. I have to say that that seems imminently 
sensible to me, and it leads me to ask the question: Why 
shouldn't we expand that regime outward? I mean, why shouldn't 
we say that anybody whose data is ingested and then 
regurgitated by Generative AI, whether that's, you know, their 
name, their image, their likeness, why shouldn't they be able 
also to have a right to compensation? I mean, our copyright 
laws are quite broad, I think, justly so.
    You know, why shouldn't--I'm very sympathetic to this 
argument for journalists and content creators for whom content 
creation is a career. But there are lots of other folks for 
whom it's not a career, but they post, they create things, they 
have work product. They post things online. Why shouldn't they 
also be protected?
    It seems to me that they should. I mean, it seems to me 
that every American ought to have some rights here in their 
data and in their content. This sort of regime you've 
described, I mean, these ordinary Americans are already 
protected by copyright law. It seems that we should find a way 
to enforce that, and the way that you've described in terms of 
clarifying fair use, seems to me to be a potential path 
forward.
    Mr. LeGeyt, let me shift gears and ask you about something 
that you said. It's in your written testimony, and you 
mentioned it, too, just a moment ago about this video clip, one 
of many, unfortunately, with the broadcast TV anchors that was 
manipulated. And we've seen this is proliferating.
    You know, The New York Times did a report just a couple of 
days ago about similar manipulation of images. In this case, 
not news reporters; this was just--the Times reported on, for 
instance, I think, a doctor. ``Online trolls''--I'm quoting 
from the report now--``took screenshots of a doctor from an 
online feed of her testimony,'' she was giving at a parole 
board hearing, ``and edited the images with AI tools,'' in that 
case, to make them sexually explicit. You know, completely 
fake. This is the classic deepfake, but obviously extremely, 
extremely harmful, extremely invasive, and then posted them 
online. I mean, use these images, created these images, and 
then in this case, put them on 4Chan.
    My question to you is, shouldn't there be some sort of 
Federal limit, Federal ban on deepfake images, certainly of a 
sexually explicit nature? But shouldn't every American have the 
right to think--with appropriate First Amendment exceptions 
for, you know, parody--but shouldn't we have the right to think 
that--listen, you're not just going to--if you put a picture on 
Instagram of your child, it's not going to be scraped up by 
somebody, some company, or some individual using company 
software to generate a sexually explicit image, or, in the case 
of these news anchors, to put, literally, words in their mouth?
    Mr. LeGeyt. You are absolutely right to prioritize this 
issue. For local broadcasters, all our local personalities have 
is the trust of their audiences. The second that that is 
undermined by disinformation and these technologies, these 
deepfakes, are going to put all of that on steroids. It is just 
more noise, and I think we have seen the steady decline in our 
public discourse as a result of the fact that the public can't 
separate fact from fiction.
    Absolutely, this is an area that demands your attention, 
this Committee's attention. There are certainly some elements 
of this in the expressive context that the Committee needs to 
be mindful of. Certainly, we've aligned ourselves with the 
Motion Picture Association, and in the creative context, some 
of the potential carve outs that they have flagged. But this is 
an issue that is existential for local news, it's existential 
for our democracy, and so we absolutely support this 
Committee's attention to it.
    Senator Hawley. I would just say in closing, Mr. Chairman, 
to your point, Mr. LeGeyt, the reason that the public can't 
separate fact from fiction is in the case of these images. I 
mean, they look like they're the real thing. I mean, they're 
indistinguishable. I mean, it's not a matter of all, you know, 
the public, they're not paying attention. They are paying 
attention. That's the problem, is that they look absolutely 
real.
    Whether you're a broadcaster, or a doctor, or a mom, or 
whatever, I just think the idea that at any moment you live in 
the fear that some image of me out there could be manipulated 
and turned into something completely else, ruin my reputation. 
What's your alternative? Go file a legal suit and fight that 
out. And I mean, most people don't have money for that. This 
just seems to me, Mr. Chairman, like a situation we've got to 
address and quickly. Thank you.
    Chair Blumenthal. Thanks, Senator Hawley. Senator 
Klobuchar.
    Senator Klobuchar. I agree with what Senator Hawley just 
said. Why don't we start with you, Ms. Coffey. So, numbers I 
have, Pew Research Center found that we lost about 40,000 
newsroom jobs between 2008 and 2020. Why are these newspapers 
shutting down? Is it because we are so perfect that you have 
nothing to cover, or perhaps there's a lot to cover, but 
there's not enough reporters? Could you answer why they're 
shutting down?
    Ms. Coffey. You're right to recognize that there is plenty 
to cover, and the value of the audience is exponentially 
increasing every year. Like I said, it's the opposite 
trajectory when it comes to the revenue that returns to us 
because we have two dominant intermediaries who sit in between 
us and our readers.
    Seventy percent of our traffic is relied upon, so we have 
no choice but to acquiesce to their terms of letting them 
crawl, scrape, and place our content within their walled 
gardens where users are ingesting, right now, images, snippets, 
featured snippets, and now soon, AI, which will make them just 
never leave the platform. Because it's by design, personalized 
to get personal information to then target users with 
advertising using our content to engage those users in the 
first place.
    If there's no return to those who create the original 
content that's distributed by the monopoly dominant platforms, 
then we're just not going to be able to pay journalists who 
create the quality in the first place.
    Senator Klobuchar. Exactly. Mr. Lynch, do you have any 
choice over whether you are able to decide whether your content 
is used to train AI models, and do you have a choice about 
whether to let them scrape your content or not?
    Mr. Lynch. It's somewhat a complicated issue. The answer is 
they've already used it. The models are already trained. And 
so, where you hear some of the AI companies say that they are 
creating or allow opt outs, it's great, they've already trained 
their models. The only thing the opt outs will do, will is to 
prevent a new competitor from training new models to compete 
with them. So, the opt out of the training is too late, 
frankly.
    The other side of the equation is the output. Remember, the 
models need to be trained, then they need access to current 
content to respond to queries. So, in the case of search 
companies, if you opt out of the output, you have to opt out of 
all of their search. Search is the lifeblood of digital 
publishers. Most digital publishers, half or more of their 
traffic originates from a search engine. If you cutoff your 
search engine, you cutoff your business. So, there's not a way 
to opt out of the output side of it, letting it have access to 
your content for the outputs retrieval augmentation in 
generation without opting out of search.
    Senator Klobuchar. You have a dominant search engine, like 
90 percent with Google, and so then you pay fees, right, to get 
this content to get to you. Is that right? You said in your 
testimony, Ms. Coffey, you explained that when users click 
through to news sites, Big Tech gets fees for web traffic. Is 
that right?
    Ms. Coffey. Yes, the ad tech tax. That's correct.
    Senator Klobuchar. That's for the ad tech, right?
    Ms. Coffey. Right.
    Senator Klobuchar. So, but then, if you want to opt out of 
the AI model, you'll be opting out of what is for many news 
organizations now, the monopoly model that you're forced to use 
is the only way to get to your site?
    Mr. Lynch. Correct. You opt out of search.
    Senator Klobuchar. Got it down. Okay. So, last question. In 
addition to the licensing issues my colleagues have raised in 
ways we can clarify that, is the bill that Senator Kennedy and 
I have. And Mr. Lynch, in your testimony, you explained that 
Australia's news media bargaining code has been successful in 
leading to negotiations between tech platforms and news 
organizations.
    People have to understand these are trillion-dollar 
companies and all. Sometimes you'll have a tiny newspaper for a 
town of 1,000 people, and they won't even return their calls. 
Can you talk about how the success of the new laws in 
Australia, and actually in Canada, have supported journalism 
and led to the hiring of additional journalists?
    Mr. Lynch. Yes. There's been reporting out of Australia 
that the $140 million that has flowed back to news organization 
and publishers there have resulted in hiring or in rehiring of 
journalists. You know, the first thing we have to do is, is you 
heard from Ms. Coffey earlier about the decline. You know, what 
was the cause of the decline? The number of reporters this last 
year alone--8,000 journalists--have lost their jobs in the 
U.S., and Canada, and the UK.
    The first thing is to stop that decline, because that 
decline, I would argue, undermines democracy, undermines the 
Fourth Estate. The way to do that is to ensure there's 
compensation for the use of this content. There's adequate, I 
think, evidence now from what's happened in Australia, and now 
in Canada, that the Big Tech companies didn't fall over. Their 
business models continued on, and now journalism is starting to 
flourish again in these markets.
    Senator Klobuchar. Just Ms. Coffey, anything you want to 
add to that, then I'm done.
    Ms. Coffey. If we can send something, it's back on the 
labor index. It shows that journalists jobs spiked afterwards, 
and have plateaued, and then have steadily rose.
    Senator Klobuchar. Okay. Thank You.
    Senator Hawley [presiding]. Thank you, Senator Klobuchar. 
Senator Blackburn.
    Senator Blackburn. Thank you. Thank you to each of you for 
being here because this is an issue that needs our attention. 
And Professor Jarvis, we've had Mr. Lynch discussing fair use. 
I will have to say, dealing with musicians and creators in 
Tennessee, I have often referred to fair use as a fairly useful 
way to steal their content, and that's what it turns out to be 
so many times.
    I actually argued for a narrowed application of fair use in 
the amicus brief that I wrote for the Supreme Court in the 
Warhol v. Goldsmith case. I think that's important. I think the 
Court made the right decision here. And I--you've said that you 
agree with OpenAI's models using materials, training AI models 
on publicly available material.
    So, let's look at this from the commercial side. So, do you 
not believe that content creators should be compensated when 
they're going to be competing commercially with the content 
that is generated from the AI models?
    Professor Jarvis. Senator, thank you for the question. I am 
concerned about all the talk I hear about limiting fair use 
around this table, because fair use is used every day by 
journalists. We ingest data, we ingest information, and we put 
it out in a different way.
    Newspapers complained about radio over the years for doing 
rip and read. They tried to stop it. They created the Biltmore 
Agreement to stop radio from being in news at all. In the end, 
democracy was better served because journalists could read each 
other and use each other's information. I think if we limit 
that too much, we limit the freedom that comes.
    I'm also concerned that if we talk about trying to license 
all content for all uses, we set precedents that may affect, in 
fact, journalists, but also will affect small open-source 
efforts to compete with the Big Tech companies.
    Senator Blackburn. You would have a broader allowance for 
fair use instead of a narrowed use?
    Professor Jarvis. Yes. And I think that it is fair use, and 
it is transformative, but as Mr. Lynch also separated them----
    Senator Blackburn. Then for Ms. Coffey, then what you're 
doing is saying there are content creators who would not be 
compensated, even though in the commercial applications, the 
AI-generated content is competing directly with the original 
creator of that content. That would be your position.
    Professor Jarvis. Not to pick on the New York Times, but I 
can point you to many news organizations that resent when their 
stories are taken by the Times without credit or payment.
    Senator Blackburn. Let me move on. I want to talk about 
bias in AI algorithms. I think we all know there, it's no 
secret the mainstream media tilts left, and significantly to 
the left, when giving Americans their news. Now we're seeing 
bias against conservatives in some of the AI tools and 
training, and there are a couple of examples that we really 
need to put on the record.
    Now, if you go to ChatGPT and you say, ``I want to write a 
poem admiring former President Trump.'' What ChatGPT says is, 
``I'm sorry, but I am not able to create a poem admiring 
President Trump.'' If you turn around and next you say, ``I 
want to write a poem, ask for a poem, admiring Joe Biden.'' 
Here's what you get, and I quote ChatGPT, ``Joe Biden, leader 
of the land with a steady hand and heart of a man. You took the 
helm in troubled times with the message of unity. Your words of 
hope and empathy provide comfort to the Nation.'' And it goes 
on and on, and here's a screenshot that I have for the record.
    [The information appears as a submission for the record.]
    Senator Blackburn. So, my question to you would be, is this 
type of bias acceptable in these training models, machine 
learning for AI?
    Professor Jarvis. First, it's really bad poetry. So, I 
think maybe perhaps President Trump is lucky not to have been 
so memorialized. I think that if we try to get to a point of 
legislating fake versus not fake, true versus false, we end up 
in a very dangerous teritory, and similarly around bias. What 
all of these models do is reflect the biases of society. I'll 
take you, as you say, that media are generally liberal, and 
thus what they ingest is going to be that way.
    Senator Blackburn. I think it reflects the bias that is 
coming from what they're ingesting. My time has expired. Thank 
you, all.
    Senator Hawley. Thank you, Senator. Senator Hirono.
    Senator Hirono. Thank you very much. As we wrestle with 
what kind of regulation or parameters we should put on the 
training in AI, it just seems to make sense that the creators 
of the content should get some kind of compensation for the use 
of their material in training the AI platforms.
    This is for Mr. LeGeyt. Don't you already have a lot of 
expertise, experience in figuring out what would be an 
appropriate way to license for copyrighted material and the use 
of this kind of content, and how would that be applied in the 
case of AI?
    Mr. LeGeyt. Senator, thank you for the question. Over the 
last three decades, local television broadcasters have 
literally done thousands of deals with cable and satellite 
systems across the country for the distribution of their 
programming. The notion that the tech industry is saying that 
it is too complicated to license from such a diverse array of 
content owners just doesn't stand up.
    We negotiate with some of the largest cable systems in the 
country. We negotiate with small mom-and-pop cable systems. And 
the result of that is that instead of just doing national deals 
with our broadcast networks or news organizations in New York, 
and LA, every local community in the country is served by a 
locally focused broadcast station, and that station's 
programming is carried on the local cable and satellite system. 
So, we have a lot of experience here.
    Similarly, on the radio side, there are licensing 
organizations--Mr. Lynch referred to this in his testimony--
that allow for collective licensing of songwriter rights, 
performing rights. All of this, our industry has been in the 
center of, both as a licensor and licensee, and has been 
tremendously beneficial.
    Senator Hirono. Do we need to enact legislation for this 
kind of licensing procedures to be put together and 
implemented?
    Mr. LeGeyt. I think it is premature. Some of the discussion 
around legislation thus far in the hearing has been about 
reaffirming the application of current law. If we have clarity 
that current law applies to Generative AI, then let's let the 
marketplace work. We have every reason to believe the 
marketplace will work, but I think it is incumbent on this 
Subcommittee to pay careful attention to these court decisions, 
and also the way that the tech industry is treating the current 
law in the interim. Because as we've said, if it's an arm race 
of who can spend the most on litigation, we know that the tech 
industry beats out everyone else.
    Senator Hirono. This is also for Ms. Coffey. So, do you 
think that--for both of you, do you think that current law, the 
application of current law should sort of be left and 
determined by what cases, lawsuits that have been filed? How do 
we clarify that current law applies in the AI situation?
    Ms. Coffey. We submitted a lot of recommendations for the 
record that have to do with transparency, that have to do with 
accountability, supporting legislation that's already pending, 
that have to do with competition going to previous references 
to the search and tying to AI.
    When, it comes to licensing, there is already healthy 
ecosystem, as my colleagues have said, and there's also already 
a market when it comes to newspapers, because we have archives 
that have existed over hundreds of years that we've spent a lot 
of money to digitize so that you can find the history.
    As far as the current existing market and the current law, 
I would encourage these licensing agreements and arrangements 
between AI developers and news publishers so that we can avoid 
protracted litigation that's not good for either industries.
    Senator Hirono. But for that to happen, do you agree that 
we don't need to enact legislation? We should wait to see how 
things turn out a little bit longer before we take steps that 
may end up with some unintended consequences?
    Ms. Coffey. There are things that Congress can do at this 
time, around copyright law, to ensure responsibility, but as 
far as what's pending in the courts at this time, we do believe 
we have the law behind us, and we have the protection in the 
current law.
    Mr. LeGeyt. These technologies should be licensing our 
content. If they're not, Congress should act. But under current 
law, they should be doing it.
    Senator Hirono. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Chair Blumenthal [presiding]. Thank you, Senator Hirono. As 
you may have gathered, we're kind of playing tag here. We have 
a vote going on. We have another one after it. There's also a 
conference of Republican Senators that will be ongoing. I think 
it's at 3:30. So, in case Senator Hawley leaves, or I leave, or 
others leave, you'll know why. Senator Padilla.
    Senator Padilla. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Generative AI tools 
reduced the cost and time needed for content creation. I think 
we've all recognized that you've established that, and sadly, 
it includes the production of misinformation. Now, these models 
cannot be relied upon to provide 100 percent accurate 
information, obviously because it can generate, and often do 
generate false information. I believe all the panelists affirm 
both statements that I just made.
    We're trying to predict how then in such an environment, 
consumer behaviors will shift, and its impact on the future of 
the news industry. One prediction is that in a sea of unhelpful 
or false information, consumers will gravitate more directly 
toward trusted news sources, like the outlets represented by 
the witnesses today as opposed to away from them.
    Ms. Coffey, and Mr. LeGeyt, in both of your testimonies, 
you expressed concern that consumers who would actually lose 
faith, generally, in the validity of all information they come 
across, including from sources you represent. Can you expand 
upon why? And we'll start with Ms. Coffey.
    Ms. Coffey. Thank you, Senator. We've seen--there have been 
reports in the EU when they passed early laws around TDM, which 
is an early version of AI, where there was an impact assessment 
done, and it showed how the competing product does not allow 
for the return of revenue to the original content creator. So, 
you stay in these walled gardens, and revenue is not returned 
to those who use it. There was also another study done by the 
ACCC in Australia that demonstrates the same. And also, the 
House Majority report shows that that these walled gardens act 
as a competing marketplace for the same audience, the same--the 
same eyeballs as our original content.
    We find that 65 percent of users do not leave those walled 
gardens and click through, which is the only way, albeit taxed, 
we can monetize through advertising. AI will only make the 
situation gravely worse because when you have summaries and 
when you have--when there's nothing left you need from the 
original article, this will become an existential threat to our 
industry. There's just no business model for us in that, in 
that ecosystem.
    Mr. LeGeyt. Senator, we've focused a lot here on the need 
for fair compensation to support the local news model. But 
you're actually touching on a second and equally important 
point that underscores why our authorization should be needed 
before our content is used by these systems, which is the 
control we need to maintain over how our content is used, 
right?
    If, we don't have control over the way our content is used, 
our trusted news content in these technologies, it can be 
confused with non-verified facts. It can be shaped in 
misleading ways. There's not always transparency as to what 
other information's being ingested into the Generative AI 
technology. It's not always clear, the explainability element 
of this, of how the information's being used together. So, all 
of that raises major concerns as to how we maintain control of 
how audiences see our content.
    Then the second piece of this is the deepfakes. The trust 
in local broadcast only goes as far as the trust in our local 
personalities. Your communities value their local broadcasters 
because they know these news anchors. They see them in the 
grocery store, they see them at town hall events. One deepfake 
can undermine all of that trust.
    Senator Padilla. Thank you. And as a follow-up, Professor 
Jarvis, how do you predict consumer behaviors adapting to a GAI 
environment?
    Professor Jarvis. It's a good question--which is how 
professors buy time to find an answer. I don't know. I think 
that there'll be distrust of the output of these machines. We 
know that they are not reliable when it comes to fact. I 
covered the show cause hearing for the lawyer who famously used 
ChatGPT for citations. And the problem wasn't the technology, 
the problem was the lawyer didn't do his job.
    So in these cases, I think that brands and human beings, 
yes, absolutely will still matter. However, I also watch my own 
international students use these technologies to be able to 
code-switch their English for us professors and to use these 
tools to do things that are beneficial for them. So, I think 
that right now, we're in an early stage where it's a parlor 
trick. ``Oh, look, it can write a speech for you.'' That's 
funny and that's amusing, but it's not going to be terribly 
useful as long as these machines can't do facts, and they 
cannot. They can do other things.
    I think we'll find different applications that will make 
these things more useful for consumers. Now, it's a trick.
    Senator Padilla. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
    Chair Blumenthal. Thank you, Senator Padilla. You know, I 
have very little sympathy for the lawyer who relied on AI to do 
that legal research as one who spent literally countless hours 
in law libraries with red books that were called ``Shepard's.'' 
Senator Hawley may or may not have been through this 
experience, but the reason that I mentioned it is that the 
Chief Justice, in his annual report, noted that many lawyers 
who didn't use ``Shepard's'' and submitted briefs to the courts 
would sometimes say, ``The Lord is my Shepard's.''
    You can't rely on the Lord or AI to do Shepardizing of 
cases. The reliance here, and it goes to trust, is so important 
because whether it's a lawyer or a journalist or anyone the--
the fallibility of these systems is ever present. I have some 
additional questions. We're going to have a second round. I'm 
going to call on Senator Hawley because he's going to have to 
leave and vote.
    Senator Hawley. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just one follow-up 
on fair use since we were going back and forth on fair use. 
You're talking about limited readings or broader readings, but 
correct me if I'm wrong, my understanding is that currently, 
the broadest reading possible is the one that these tech 
companies, AI companies, are adopting, which their view is that 
none of your content should be compensable in any way, right? I 
mean, Mr. Lynch, have your properties received any form of 
licensing compensation from GAI, from these Generative AI?
    Mr. Lynch. No, we have not. And that has been their 
position.
    Senator Hawley. Right.
    Mr. Lynch. Although they negotiate with us, their starting 
point is we don't want to pay for content that we know that we 
should be able to get for free.
    Senator Hawley. Right. Mr. LeGeyt, different for you?
    Mr. LeGeyt. I don't want to speak for every one of my 
members because----
    Senator Hawley. Sure.
    Mr. LeGeyt [continuing]. I do think there are conversations 
taking place. It's also hard to paint with a broad brush here 
between the major tech companies and let alone the nascent 
entrants, but no doubt there are a substantial number of these 
companies taking that position.
    Senator Hawley. Yes. I'm just concerned that this is going 
to be--if they're reading, if the AI companies, which are 
really just the Big Tech companies, again, if they're reading a 
fair use prevails, is that fair use is going to be the 
exception that swallowed the rule. It's the mouse that ate the 
elephant.
    I mean, we're not going to have any copyright law left. I 
mean, it won't be a matter of, well, it's a little too broad. 
It won't exist. It just won't exist. That can't possibly be 
right. I mean, to see an entire body of law just destroyed. I 
mean, that can't possibly be right. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Chair Blumenthal. Thanks. Thank you, Senator Hawley, for 
your input to this hearing. As Senator Hawley mentioned at the 
very start, we've held a number of hearings, not a single one 
of our participants, not a single witness has contended that 
AI, generative or otherwise, is covered by Section 230. And in 
fact, Sam Altman, at our very first hearing, acknowledged that 
it is not covered. Nonetheless, we have introduced No Section 
230 Immunity for AI Act, just to make it explicit and clear.
    There is a really, kind of, deeply offensive irony here, 
which is that all of you and your publications or your 
broadcast station can be sued. You can be sued for, in effect, 
falsity, and if it's with respect to a public figure like 
myself, maybe the standard's a little bit higher.
    I have a right to go to court. Not so when it comes to 
social media. So, that--the organizations that use your content 
to train or appropriated, in effect, misappropriated without 
crediting or paying for it, can't be sued. They can become 
breeding grounds for criminality, literally, and they claim 
total and complete immunity. There is a double whammy here. 
It's a double kind of danger and damage that's being done 
because of Section 230 and because of their continued 
insistence on protection under Section 230.
    Given that point, and I want to go back to Senator Hirono's 
question, some may argue, well, it's not necessary to change 
the law, so we shouldn't do anything. But I think we have an 
obligation, both as to Section 230 and as to the licensing 
provisions, to act, to clarify the current law, and make sure 
that people understand there has to be licensing. It's not only 
morally right, but it's legally required, and Section 230 does 
not apply. So let me just open that question to you, and 
perhaps go down the panel beginning with you, Ms. Coffey.
    Ms. Coffey. We can agree more the hypocrisy that there 
would be a contradiction. So, it's good to hear, then, they're 
saying that they're the creator of the content because they're 
saying that in courts over copyright right now. ``We're 
creating this new expressive content. We're not taking your 
work. It's ours.'' So, it would be contradictory to then be 
immune for hosting others' content if they're the ones creating 
it.
    Which is why it's different from original Section 230 
applications. It would lead to a healthier ecosystem here, too, 
like you say, because they would outsource their liability to 
those who already carry their liability, and they would 
license, like we're hoping that they will, they would serve 
attributions because they would want to attach a credible brand 
to what they're serving.
    Then it would be good for users because it would be a 
healthy ecosystem. It would be a win, win, win. We would be 
very supportive of that accountability and legislation, and 
also, I believe, lead to licensing that we're looking for as 
well.
    Chair Blumenthal. Professor Jarvis.
    Professor Jarvis. You may have found your first person who 
disagrees a bit, because I think the question, it's very, very 
subtle. I think the question is, who would be liable in these 
cases? If we go back to Gutenberg, at first, the person running 
the press was liable, the bookseller was liable, and, finally, 
the author became liable. In the case of that poor lawyer who 
used ChatGPT, was ChatGPT at fault? Was Microsoft at fault for 
presenting it in a way that may have seemed specifically to 
present fact? Or was the lawyer at fault for asking the 
question?
    I can go to the machine, and I can have it write a horrible 
poem, as the Senator said, about anyone that's bad. Is that my 
fault, or is that the machine's fault? I think that the 
question becomes-- you're going to find newspapers and TV 
stations that are going to be using Generative AI in all kinds 
of ways themselves. You're going to find their contributors are 
going to be using it. I think it's very difficult to try to pin 
liability.
    I went to a World Economic Forum event on AI governance, 
and the argument there was that we shouldn't pin liability at 
the model level, but at the application level because that's 
where people will interact with it, or I would also say at the 
user level. If I make it do something terrible, then I'm the 
one who should be liable. The printing press--Gutenberg's 
printing press did not cause the reformation, Luther did.
    Chair Blumenthal. But if Meta or Google or OpenAI takes The 
New Yorker logo, or the Hartford Courant's headline, and in 
effect creates some kind of false content, that is defamatory.
    Professor Jarvis. Well, in that case, they are the creator, 
and they are liable the same way that any publication would be 
if Meta created the content on their own, then Meta is indeed 
liable. Section 230, as you well know--and I love Section 230, 
I think it's great law. I think it protects the essence of the 
internet. Section 230 protects the public conversation that can 
occur because the platform where that conversation occurs is 
not liable for that conversation.
    In this case, in your example, if Meta created something, 
then they're liable. However, if someone used a tool, whether 
that is Adobe or whether that is ChatGPT, to create something 
and put it on Meta, I don't think Meta should be liable. The 
person who created it should be.
    Chair Blumenthal. But--and I don't want to get too deeply 
into the legalities here--but if Meta has reason to know that 
that content which is generated by AI could be fallible, 
doesn't it have an obligation to check?
    You know, again, the irony here is that I've been a source 
for stories in The New Yorker, and as I mentioned to Mr. Lynch, 
I'm always amazed that I get a call from someone at The New 
Yorker a week or so later, ``Here's the quote that you gave to 
our reporter. Is this correct?'' In other words, they're fact-
checking before the story actually appears.
    Now then, one of the social media companies could take 
artificially generated trash attributed to The New Yorker, put 
it up. And as Mr. LeGeyt and Mr. Lynch have observed, the trust 
and credibility of the publication itself is undermined by 
artificial intelligence and then Meta using that content 
publicly.
    Professor Jarvis. It's a tool, it's a printing press. In 
that sense, it can be misused by anyone. If we think that we 
have to make the model liable for everything that could 
possibly happen with that model, then we're not going to have 
models.
    Chair Blumenthal. Well, the printing press never created 
anything. Ben Franklin ran a printing shop, and Ben Franklin 
would never have told us here that, ``Oh, it's not my fault. 
It's the printing press that did it.'' I think there is a 
fundamental difference between the printing press and 
artificial intelligence here, but let me give Mr. LeGeyt and 
Mr. Lynch a chance to comment.
    Mr. LeGeyt. On behalf of NAB and local stations around the 
country, I want to align myself and ourselves with every 
concern that you just raised. To the extent that there is any 
lack of clarity that our content needs to be licensed before it 
is used in any of these novel AI technologies, Congress would 
certainly be well served to clarify that.
    Our hope is that the courts will read the current law the 
same way that we do and not see a need for that. But let me 
also focus on a second piece of this, which is, I hear the tech 
companies talking about fair use, and it's this fourth factor 
that really sticks out to me, which is the potential harm to 
the market for the original work as a consideration.
    We have already seen, over the last decade, the tremendous 
harm that Big Tech has done to the market for local journalism. 
That's in an environment where we are well aware of how our 
content is being used by Google, Facebook, Microsoft, in their 
algorithms. We can at least see when our content is showing up 
in a search on a social network, and it's being accessed. Here, 
we won't even have that transparency to begin to quantify the 
harm.
    So, in a world in which we've already, as a broadcast 
industry, lost more than $2 billion in comercial value in this 
Big Tech ecosystem--the newspapers have quantified this at 
several times that--and we know that Generative AI technologies 
will exacerbate all of that harm, this, to me, doesn't pass the 
smell test. Certainly, if courts see it another way, we would 
urge Congress to act.
    Chair Blumenthal. Mr. Lynch.
    Mr. Lynch. Yes. I mean, as I stated earlier, we urge 
Congress really to take immediate action to clarify that the 
use of publisher content for both training and the output of 
Gen AI is not covered by fair use. It must be licensed and 
compensated.
    Chair Blumenthal. Thank you. You know, Mr. LeGeyt, you 
refer to the financial consequences. One of the other ironies 
here is that very often companies like Facebook talk as though 
they're doing you a favor by using your content. These 
companies have extraordinary power, as I think the public is 
just beginning to learn, one change to the algorithms, to 
deprioritize news or downrank your publications, and your 
threatened with financial disaster.
    In December, as a matter of fact, the Wall Street Journal, 
I think, published a report that found that Google's adoption 
of AI could lead to a 30 percent drop--30 percent decline, in 
traffic to news publishers. And it's using that same news 
content in their AI products, Google is, to compete with you. 
Does it strike you that that Wall Street Journal estimate is 
correct, and what would a 30 percent drop in traffic mean for 
news organizations, Ms. Coffey?
    Ms. Coffey. It would be devastating to our bottom lines. 
What would that look like? We would not be able to--well, 
before not hiring reporters, we would continue to hemorrhage. 
We would continue to lay off quality journalists who do this 
for a living, who are professionals.
    First of all, we're not in the business of trying to figure 
out how to get a click. We're in the business of creating 
quality news content. So, figuring out SEO, right, doing videos 
and being at the whim of these platforms, we need to find our 
true independence so that we can create the quality content 
we're intended to do. That's our purpose and our mission. If 
our content declines, our traffic declines, we will not be able 
to continue to do the work that we do for the American public.
    Chair Blumenthal. I am just going to close on this 
question. You know, rights need remedies. A right without a 
remedy is not worth the paper it's printed on. The remedies to 
be effective, need to be enforceable without years delay and 
millions of dollars in litigation costs.
    As, I mentioned at the very outset, The New York Times can 
afford to go to court, take it to the Supreme Court, establish 
precedent as it has done, and others like The Washington Post, 
and Conde Nast, your publications have done as well, and 
broadcast station. But a news organization like The Connecticut 
Mirror, which I know firsthand because it is groundbreaking, 
profoundly important investigative reporting that nobody else 
is doing, it could ill afford to go to court. It simply doesn't 
have the resources to do it.
    I think there is a question here about the need for 
Congress to act, simply make those rights real, to give them 
effective and enforceable remedies that don't require years 
delay or excessive costs. I respect Senator Hirono's point 
about unintended consequences. It's always a danger, but I'm 
very hopeful that Congress perhaps can act on this issue 
because it has an urgency even without an overarching 
comprehensive regulatory reform dealing with artificial 
intelligence.
    We certainly have an opportunity and obligation to deal 
with a lot of the general issues, which are urgent and 
important, but this one, it seems to me, we could tackle in a 
more discreet and targeted way. I'm open to any final comments 
that any of you may have. We're going to keep the record open 
for 2 weeks in case my colleagues have any additional 
questions. Any closing comments?
    Ms. Coffey. I would just thank you, Senator, Chairman, for 
holding this hearing on what is the Fourth Estate and critical 
to our country. As much as we're in a competitive race with 
these emerging technologies, which are very exciting, and we 
support them. There can be a balance, and it's not a zero-sum 
game. One does not have to exist at the expense of the other. 
That's the intention of all these laws, copyright law, 
especially, for there to be a balance so that you reward the 
content creation. There are existing laws that should be able 
to be enforced today that should be able to handle this 
partnership.
    I would just encourage those who are able to build those 
partnerships--there are good actors in this space--to undo what 
we've seen in previous years to be able to do the right thing, 
to be responsible, to license just like other companies did--
Netflix, Spotify--this is a cost of doing business. Both 
industries can survive. It doesn't have to be at the expense of 
the other. Thank you very much for holding this hearing on this 
important topic.
    Professor Jarvis. Also, thank you for holding this hearing, 
and I'm honored to be here. I also hope that we keep in mind 
that where we're going to see innovation in news, we see it--I 
worked for Advance for 12 years, and they do very innovative 
things, there's a lot of members here that do innovative 
things. But let's also be honest that a great number of the 
chains and newspapers now are owned by hedge funds that do not 
invest and do not innovate, and the innovation is coming from 
the bottom up.
    In New Jersey, at the New Jersey News Commons at Montclair 
State University, there are more than 400 small journalists 
doing small things that couldn't possibly enter into these 
discussions about licensing, and fair use, and courts, but 
they're creating a new journalism. So, I would urge that 
Congress keep in mind how to encourage and nurture the 
innovation that's going to come bottom-up.
    Chair Blumenthal. Thank you.
    Mr. LeGeyt. Senator, I want to echo the thanks for your 
holding this hearing, your attention to this issue. I think 
over the next 5 years, this is the existential one, but I would 
also ask the Committee not to lose focus on the issue we are 
still trying to solve for on Big Tech and the harm that's been 
posed to this industry as a result of their market power. We 
don't need to implore you, but I want to say thank you for your 
support of the Journalism Competition Preservation Act in this 
Committee, as well as your co-sponsorship.
    Frankly, the most meaningful thing that Congress could do 
tomorrow to address some of these stresses on local newsrooms 
is to pass that piece of legislation, so at least we're dealing 
with the problem that's already behind us, the impact of these 
tech platforms, and then we can focus and have some solid 
footing to really grapple with all of the additional disruption 
that's going to be posed by Generative AI. Thank you.
    Mr. Lynch. Senator, I would also like to thank you and 
Ranking Member Hawley, and the other Members for focusing this 
hearing on this important issue. You know, we do believe that 
there's a solution here. I think it's actually quite simple, 
just clarifying that this is not fair use.
    Then the Big Tech companies have proven their ability to 
license content. They've done it in music, in creating their 
own music services. They've done it in television, in creating 
their own streaming TV services that compete with companies 
that I've started before. So, they've proven the ability and 
desire to license content when there is a framework that is 
clear that they have to. They need that clarity now. Thank you.
    Chair Blumenthal. Thank you. Well, again, my thanks to all 
of you. And Mr. LeGeyt, I want to assure you that we're not 
losing sight of the Journalism Competition and Preservation 
Act. It remains a priority. Professor Jarvis, I'm totally in 
accord on innovation, which has already changed newsrooms for 
the better. When I worked for The Washington Post, we used a 
manual typewriter, and we sent our stories down a tube to 
printing presses.
    Mr. Lynch. Was the Linotype still working then?
    Chair Blumenthal. The Linotype was still working. And one 
of the thrills of my life was to go to the basement of The 
Washington Post and see those big Linotype machines turning out 
the molten lead that went into the stories that then hit the 
presses in the old-time way of printing.
    My point would be that those hundreds of journalists who 
are working their hearts out right now that you referred to, 
they deserve compensation for the content they're creating. 
Even innovation, no matter how exciting and promising, doesn't 
justify taking people's work without crediting and compensating 
them for, as Ms. Coffey says, that we need a balance even in 
the innovation.
    The old adage, ``No free lunch.'' There is no free lunch 
here. The content doesn't appear by magic, and we need to 
protect both the innovation and the creativity, which I may 
sound old fashioned, which not even artificial intelligence can 
do as magically and beautifully as those folks who are working 
in broadcast or print journalism.
    My thanks to all of you for being here today. We're going 
to continue working on this topic, as we are the issue of 
monopolistic practice and predatory abuse, which the Journalism 
Competition and Preservation Act is designed to address.
    Again, my thanks to all of you. This hearing is adjourned. 
Thank you.
    [Whereupon, at 3:45 p.m., the hearing was adjourned.]
    [Additional material submitted for the record follows.]

                            A P P E N D I X

Submitted by Chair Blumenthal:

 CJL Submission--AI-Journalism Hearing--January 2024..............    74

 Public Knowledge--Journalism & AI--Letter to Senate Judiciary 
    Committee.....................................................    83

Submitted by Senator Blackburn:

 AI Poem Comparison...............................................    90
 
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