SPUR publishes AI content tracking standard, pitches OpenAI and Google to join advisory board

The Standards for Publisher Usage Rights (SPUR) coalition, whose members include the Guardian, the Financial Times, the BBC, Sky, The Times of London, MediaHaus and the AP, published version 1.0 of its content telemetry standard and invited OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Meta and Microsoft to join a new invitation-only AI Licensing Advisory Board, SPUR technical lead Alex Springer said. The standard defines a process for tracking and reporting when publisher content is retrieved, grounded, cited, presented and engaged with by AI tools, and the board — expected to have about 20 members with a first meeting planned for October — would shape how the standard is implemented. SPUR, formed in March, published a draft in June that was open for public comment until July 24; the 1.0 release adds multimodal support beyond text and easier integration with standards such as C2PA, and pilot programs with tech and AI companies are planned next.

SPUR publishes AI content tracking standard, pitches OpenAI and Google to join advisory board A coalition of media organizations, including the Guardian and the Financial Times, has released a new standard for tracking how AI tools use publishers’ content. The Standards for Publisher Usage Rights initiative, or SPUR, released the content telemetry standard https://digiday.com/media/wtf-is-spurs-publisher-run-content-telemetry-framework/ today and has invited OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Meta, Microsoft to help shape how the standard is implemented, said Alex Springer, SPUR’s technical lead. If they accept, they will join SPUR’s new, invitation-only AI Licensing Advisory Board, set up to help ensure the standard reflects the entire AI ecosystem. When asked whether Google had accepted SPUR’s invitation to join the board, a spokesperson said, “We frequently engage with SPUR and other associations on a variety of topics.” The other companies did not respond to requests for comment before publishing time. Formed in March, SPUR also includes the BBC, Sky, The Times of London, European media group MediaHaus and the AP. The standard creates a process https://github.com/SPUR-Coalition/telemetry/releases/tag/v1.0 to track and report what happens when content is retrieved, grounded used as the underlying evidence or reference for an AI answer , cited, presented and engaged with AI tools, and report that usage back to publishers. The board’s objective is to ensure that the tracking rules created in the standards work for both publishers and the companies building AI systems. If adopted, the standard could give publishers consistent data on when their content is retrieved, cited, or used in an AI-generated answer: information they could use as a starting point in licensing discussions, Springer said. Springer expects the board to include about 20 members, with its first meeting planned for October. “This will ensure both sides of the equation have a seat at the table and can work together to drive through better, fairer and more sustainable ways of working,” David Buttle, co-founder of SPUR, said in an emailed statement to Digiday. Part of the problem is that it isn’t hard for companies to get free API credits from grounding or scraping services like Exa or Parallel and immediately gain access to content, Springer said. Going through the process of properly licensing that content, by contrast, takes significantly more time and effort. “The goal is to string this whole thing together into a stack of solutions that is easy for an agent to use,” Springer said. “It’s licensing payments — or not, free content has a place in this for sure — reporting provenance; it’s that chain.” A draft of the content telemetry standard was published in June, and open for public comment until July 24. From there, the coalition created the first version of the framework published today. One of the main changes from the draft standard to the first version is that it supports multimodal, and not just text. The refinements also make it easier to integrate with other technical standards, such as C2PA and provenance standards, Springer said. The coalition is working with companies on the demand side — tech and AI companies — to implement the standard and develop proofs of concept. Next up will come pilot programs with those tech and AI companies. While Springer declined to name which companies would take part in those programs, he did note that companies like Microsoft, Google and OpenAI have started to release their own implementations of content usage reporting. “By no means did OpenAI come and comment on our standard. They are aware of it… But when you see things in Google and Microsoft systems, you see retrieval and grounding events start to appear? That action comes from somewhere,” Springer said. SPUR is also developing agent tooling that allows AI companies to adopt the standard. The aim is to support more transparent reporting and licensing. “It’ll be a better internet if the publishers can develop a sustainable revenue stream out of this, and continue to invest in premium content and journalism,” said Michael Rubenstein, co-founder and co-CEO of Firsthand, an AI brand agent platform that creates adaptive advertising experiences. “I would be concerned about a world where the quality of content degrades and the answer engines are then using increasingly degraded information .” On Oct. 15, SPUR’s first technical committee will meet to determine the framework’s “auditing and evidencing” — as in, figuring out how to validate the signals being sent from AI tools to publishers. “It’s not just publishers saying, ‘We want to count this so we can send you a bill at the end of the day.’ It’s about, ‘what was valuable, how do we get more of it? How do we find the inputs that we need and engage?’” Springer said. He argued that this can also give AI companies an incentive to engage more directly with publishers and provide them with better data about how their agents are accessing and using content — potentially giving publishers a reason not to block them. “Publishers right now want to block. We’re moving towards this just-block-by-default stance. The thing that keeps that open is to be able to start sending data back, start engaging,” Springer said. Update: In an earlier version of this story, the headline said Google and OpenAI were pitched to join the standard; it has been corrected to make clear they’ve been pitched to join the Advisory Board related to the standard. 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