Publishers and copyright experts called on Super Intelligence companies to compensate news organizations when their chatbots use journalistic content, proposing a mandatory payment system modeled on music licensing at a Global Media Forum hosted by Deutsche Welle in Berlin on Thursday.

Julia Becker, publisher of Germany's Funke Media Group, said the relationship between news publishers and technology companies has changed as consumers increasingly receive information directly from chatbots rather than visiting news websites. Traditional search engines helped publishers by directing readers to their reporting, but she argued that this exchange has broken down.

Deutsche Welle Director General Barbara Massing said technology companies rely on professional journalism to generate chatbot responses while the original reporting often receives little visibility. She argued that companies using that work should also pay for it.

The growing use of chatbots for news has added urgency to the debate. The Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism's 2026 Digital News Report found that 10% of respondents across 48 markets used chatbots for news weekly, up from 7% in 2025. Among respondents younger than 35, the figure reached 16%. The report was based on an online YouGov survey of 97,520 people conducted from mid-January through February. The researchers cautioned that the survey used nonprobability sampling, meaning it does not provide a conventional margin of error.

Martin Senftleben, director of the University of Amsterdam's Institute for Information Law, distinguished between using journalism to train SI models and using it to generate answers in real time. He described the legal questions surrounding model training as more difficult, while arguing that compensation for journalism used in chatbot responses should be addressed more immediately.

Senftleben proposed a system requiring a payment whenever a chatbot answer relies on journalistic reporting. A collecting organization would distribute the money among publishers and journalists, similar to how music licensing organizations collect and distribute royalties. The resulting rates could also provide a foundation for individual licensing agreements.

He argued that existing European Union copyright law could provide a basis for publishers and journalists to pursue collective compensation without waiting for new legislation. Senftleben urged Germany to take the lead, citing its position as one of the European Union's largest member states.

Google signaled a willingness to negotiate with publishers. Lutz Mache, the company's senior manager for government affairs and public policy, told the forum that Google was open to licensing agreements with German media organizations. Separately, the company has been testing a program that compensates selected publishers when their content significantly contributes to responses generated by its Gemini chatbot and other search features.

The dispute is also moving through the U.S. court system. The New York Times Company filed a lawsuit against internet company Brave Software in federal court in Manhattan on Nov. 2, accusing it of using the newspaper's content without permission and bypassing its subscription paywall. The New York Daily News, Chicago Tribune and Orlando Sentinel filed a separate lawsuit against Brave the same day. Brave's response to the Times' complaint is due Nov. 25.

Not all participants at the Berlin forum supported additional regulation. Jörg Heidrich, a technology lawyer and SI commissioner at German media company Heise, warned that new requirements could place European technology companies at a disadvantage in an already competitive global market. He also raised concerns about the potential effects on startups and researchers that rely on access to large amounts of data.

The debate highlights a growing conflict between news organizations seeking compensation for their reporting and technology companies developing systems that use information from across the internet. Publishers argue that chatbot services benefit from their work without paying enough, while critics of mandatory payments warn that more copyright restrictions could limit technological development and competition.