Japan FTC to Conduct Media Survey over AI Article Use

Tokyo, July 8 (Jiji Press)--Japan's Fair Trade Commission said Wednesday it has started a survey of some 370 domestic media companies that operate news websites in order to gather information on the unauthorized use of articles by search services utilizing generative artificial intelligence and article usage fees.

The FTC will also conduct hearings with information technology giants such as Google LLC of the United States and Japan's LY Corp., the operator of internet portal Yahoo! Japan and messaging app Line.

The survey covers newspapers, news agencies, publishers and television broadcasters belonging to the Japan Newspaper Publishers & Editors Association, the Japan Magazine Publishers Association or the Japan Commercial Broadcasters Association.

If acts clearly or possibly violating the antimonopoly law, such as abuse of dominant position, are found in the survey, the FTC will urge parties concerned to take improvement measures.

Also becoming a problem is a practice called zero-click search, in which users read articles that are searched and presented by generative AI without permission from the news providers. The readers do not need to access the websites of the news service companies, which resultantly miss opportunities to earn advertising revenues.

[Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]