Empowering Creators in the
Age of AI
AI is triggering a power shift in digital publishing.
It brings speed, scale, and new tools—but it also risks devaluing the creators who power the internet.
We Stand With Creators
Original content is the heart of a vibrant, diverse web. Creators deserve credit, consent, and compensation—especially when their work trains AI or shows up in AI overlays without permission.
“The market won’t fix this on its own. The time to act is now.”
– Eric Hochberger, CEO, Mediavine
We’re Not Waiting—We’re Acting
We support the U.S. Copyright Office’s position: generative AI erodes creators’ rights. But we won’t sit back and wait to see what happens.
Advocacy & Policy
- Engaging with the U.S. Copyright Office, FTC, and Congress
- Filing public comments that center creator rights
- Working within industry groups like IAB, ANA, and Prebid
- Licensing That Works for Creators
- Pushing for opt-in registries and collective licensing
- Supporting publisher-led licensing models
- Keeping creators in the AI value chain
AI That Supports—Not Replaces—Creators
- We build tools that enhance your work, not replace it.
- Smarter content optimization
- Streamlined publishing workflows
- AI-powered time-savers that keep you in control
We’re also building defenses:
- Blocking overlays that erase attribution
- Fighting snippet bias and buried traffic
- Pushing back against algorithms that silence authentic voices
The Stakes Are High
AI assistants. Walled gardens. Changing search behavior. We’re at a critical inflection point in how content is discovered and valued. If creators lose visibility now, they lose viability long-term.
The Mediavine Commitment
- Advocate for creators at the highest levels of policy and industry
- Build tools that let creators use AI on their terms
- Lead the way on fair, scalable licensing for the AI era
- Act now—because creators can’t afford the cost of delay
What Needs to Happen Next
|
Action |
Why It Matters |
| Enact Transparency Mandates |
Clear disclosures of training data, attribution, and AI use |
| Establish Creator-Centric Licensing |
Build fair licensing before AI dominance becomes irreversible |
| Protect Discovery Equity |
Safeguard diverse voices in AI search and recommender systems |
| Enforce Copyright Protections |
Training on copyrighted content is not fair use |
Join Us in Protecting the Future of the Open Web
Want to collaborate, learn more, or support the cause?
Mediavine's Letter to the US Copyright Office
To Whom It May Concern,
At Mediavine, we represent over 17,000 independent digital publishers who power the Internet with their original content. On behalf of those content creators, we are writing to express the urgency of more robust copyright protections in the age of generative AI.
The power of generative AI offers boundless potential, but without proper guardrails and protections, the free and open Internet as we know it will cease to exist.
Generative AI’s ability to streamline creative workflows and improve efficiency are a boon to many publishers and creators Mediavine represents. But the broader, additional impacts of generative AI are nothing short of existential threats.
Unauthorized use of copyright protected material to train AI models and the increasing prevalence of AI-generated overlays and summaries that displace source content without attribution and/or compensation threaten to eliminate the very voices whose material AI utilizes.
We believe this violates copyright laws and denies just economic compensation to content creators; moreover, it foundationally threatens the future of the Internet itself.
Mediavine supports the Copyright Office’s continued examination of how AI impacts creators and applauds the findings in your recent report, “Copyright and Artificial Intelligence.”
In particular, we agree that training AI models on copyright protected works without consent erodes the value of original work and challenges the very foundation of copyright law. However, we do not agree with the recommendation that the Copyright Office should take a wait-and-see approach to let the market regulate itself. The stakes are too high and there is no time to spare.
We urge the Office to consider the following positions:
- AI-generated answers that pull from creator content must clearly credit, compensate, and link to the original source.
- Training AI on copyright protected content without explicit permission should not be considered fair use.
- That this practice disrespects the intellectual property rights of creators and undermines the economic value of their work.
- Transparency should be mandated across all generative AI systems.
- Platforms and model developers should be required to disclose training data sources, including whether copyright protected content was used.
- Licensing frameworks must be developed that allow content creators to opt in and be paid for their work.
- Support for exploration of extended licensing, opt-in registries, or new models that ensure creators are included in the economic benefits generated by AI systems.
- Search equity and content attribution must be protected.
Mediavine is committed to building technology and policy solutions to support the responsible use of AI, while defending the visibility, viability, and rights of the people behind the content.
We welcome further dialogue with the Copyright Office and are available to contribute to working groups or provide data and insights on behalf of our publishers.
Sincerely,
Eric Hochberger
Founder & CEO
Mediavine