Meta Platforms has restarted talks with major publishers, including Axel Springer, Fox, and News Corp, about licensing articles for its AI products, according to The Wall Street Journal. The discussions mark a shift for the company, which previously cut back on paying for news in 2022, reducing publisher traffic from Facebook. Meta struck a Reuters deal last year, but only recently expanded conversations across the industry. Publishers have pushed back against AI scraping without compensation, with Cloudflare blocking crawlers unless they pay. Rivals like OpenAI, Amazon and others have already signed multiple licensing agreements with leading news outlets.
