Douglas McCabe, chief strategy officer of The Guardian, who has signed with OpenAI and Google, remains on the lookout for other opportunities with LLMs and returns to the ambitions of SPUR, which the newspaper co-founded.
JDN. The media, competing with AI responses, are already experiencing drops in traffic. What do you see at The Guardian and what do you think?
Douglas McCabe. A structural change is taking place in our sector with the emergence of a second internet serving robots. And it will only get worse. For the moment, The Guardian has not observed a significant impact on its traffic. But we are certain that this will happen as the use of AI grows, as is already the case in other verticals.
The Guardian announced in February 2025 a strategic agreement with OpenAI. What can you tell us about the importance of this agreement in the economy of your newspaper?
We consider it fundamental that we discuss with all these AI companies in order to understand what they are putting in place, understanding that for us, the main motivation is to maintain control over our data and our journalism. We also need our work to be clearly cited, mentioned and referenced. The infrastructure of the Internet is changing, whether we like it or not, and we must master this change. Finally, it is normal that we would like financial compensation for the use of our content in the formulation of LLM answers. This is why we are talking with all these companies, whether it is OpenAI, Google or Microsoft, and why we are very confident in our ability to sign agreements with all these solutions.
You also signed a commercial agreement with Google at the end of 2025 as part of a pilot program with AI in order, for example, to provide more context in overview responses in Google News. What does this agreement consist of and what are the benefits for you?
We already have a strong relationship with Google in many areas such as advertising, the search engine, YouTube… It is important that we are involved in the experiments that the company is carrying out in the development of its AI tools. As in the case of OpenAI, as long as The Guardian maintains control, obtains the necessary visibility over its production and fair remuneration, this type of agreement will be possible. With Google our agreement is also positive and robust and we hope to go further.
What do you think of other media outlets that fail to sign deals with these companies?
We cannot settle for a few individual agreements happening here and there. At the same time, I don’t think that the posture of blocking everything is the best one to adopt. The situation is certainly not easy but I think that a collective dialogue can be put in place.
This is the whole meaning of the SPUR initiative of which The Guardian is a founding member. But, concretely, what do you really want to achieve?
SPUR’s philosophy is proactive: it is a market initiative aimed at protecting copyright. A market initiative is just as important as the regulatory and policy route. These three aspects must coexist. The idea is to raise awareness among LLMs of the importance of adopting common standards and rules of the game so that this market can be structured in complete transparency. SPUR is starting with the news media, and with the ambition to deliver results for our sector as a whole, but it has the potential to eventually expand into the entertainment industry, sports, music, etc.
But what makes you think that LLMs, who do not hesitate to scrap content without compensation, will be responsive to your request?
Lawyers, politicians and legislators are doing their job and it is very important to us. On our side, on the market side, it is our responsibility to help LLMs understand why the quality of the information they use is so critical to their business. These companies compete strongly with each other and their difference will be the quality of the information they provide. There is no possible comparison between the value of quality journalistic content, governed by a precise editorial code and clear fact-checking rules, and the output of an AI-generated article. You cannot confuse an article signed by a journalist with the discussion you can have with a friend in a bistro. To be able to identify and produce content of this quality, you need to be a professional in the industry.
What do you advise to all publishers who are unable to sign agreements with big AI players?
SPUR is there precisely to help them move forward. I think that any publisher producing information that provides value with unique content, and this also applies to local and specialized media, can hope to find a solution. Because LLMs and agentic applications will need their information to offer the services they intend to provide.
You have signed an agreement with Prorata, which offers a remuneration sharing model through the implementation of a response engine. Does this provide you with income?
It is a very interesting initiative because it seeks to attribute and promote journalistic content. We will continue to work with them and we hope they succeed. That said, Prorata is not the only solution on the market and it is important to consider them all.
Do you have any other discussions underway or about to happen for The Guardian?
We are still in discussions with these companies, if only to understand how they develop their products and how they approach their relationship with the media. From this point of view, Microsoft’s initiative, which seeks to set up a marketplace (Publisher Content Marketplace, editor’s note) and which is currently conducting tests with American publishers, is very interesting.
