PARIS: Forty major media groups including The New York Times, The Economist and Agence France-Presse (AFP) have joined a global coalition of publishers that is seeking to prevent AI companies from using their journalism without permission, the group announced on Tuesday.

The coalition, known as SPUR (Standards for Publisher Usage Rights), was launched in February and already included media groups such as the BBC, The Financial Times and the Associated Press news agency as members.

The latest expansion doubles the number of publishers taking part, with the coalition aiming to help media companies track their content, highlight illegal copyright theft, and negotiate commercial deals with the AI groups behind services such as ChatGPT or Claude. `There is rapidlygrowing momentum behind our effort to build a fairer, more sustainable information economy, David Buttle, co-founder and spokesperson for the SPUR Coalition, said in a statement.

`We know that highquality journalism forms the foundations of AI models yet, as it stands, publishers have no mechanism to ensure they are fairly compensated for their work.` Fabrice Fries, the chairman and chief executive officer of AFP, stressed that `each day, millions of people rely on AI assistants for information gathered and verified by news agency journalists.` `That original journalistic value must be recognised, credited and fairly compensated.

Content traceability is not only a matter of intellectual property; it is also essential to maintaining public trust,` he added in a statement.-AFP