People Inc., a major U.S. media publisher, announced a new AI licensing agreement with Microsoft, becoming a launch partner in the tech giant’s publisher content marketplace. The deal follows People Inc.'s earlier partnership with OpenAI and comes as the company reports a sharp drop in traffic from Google Search, falling from 54% to 24% of its overall visits. CEO Neil Vogel highlighted the importance of being compensated for content used by AI systems and praised Microsoft’s commitment to pay for such use. The publisher also noted that blocking AI crawlers with Cloudflare technology has driven more AI firms to the negotiating table, while digital revenue rose 9% to $269 million in the latest quarter. Read more →

Cloudflare chief executive Matthew Prince is lobbying the U.K.’s Competition and Markets Authority to impose stricter rules on Google’s use of its web crawler for both search and AI products. Prince argues that bundling the crawler gives Google an unfair advantage over other AI companies, forcing media sites to opt out of both search and AI content simultaneously. Cloudflare, which hosts many AI firms, is providing data to the CMA to support regulatory action and is promoting a more competitive market where AI providers would pay for content rather than rely on Google’s free access. Read more →