'The net is tightening' on AI scraping: Annotated Q&A with Financial Times' head of global public policy and platform strategy

"The Financial Times was the first U.K.-based publisher to strike a licensing deal with OpenAI in 2024. It has yet to agree to terms with another consumer LLM, but Matt Rogerson, FT's director of global public policy and platform strategy, believes 2026 will bring a kind of reset as big tech companies alter their stance on AI licensing to avoid future legal risk. And he believes AI scraping is reaching a new phase."

"You're starting to see an increasing number of institutions and [corporate] companies that are taking AI summarization licenses. They know that the materials inside AI models - for it to be valuable to them and their businesses - it has to be top quality content and has to be accurate, and it has to be from brands that they can see, know and trust. So I think those moves towards B2B licensing we're seeing are really, really positive."

""Every publisher has spent the last two years trying to close down all the loopholes, or perceived loopholes, in their website securities," he said. "There are still gaps. There's still really no big enough stick to stop entrepreneurs from using scraping for higher platforms to try and get behind paywalls and then scrape content from publisher sites. But I think that the net is tightening [around AI scraping].""

Publishers have spent much of the past year defending against AI scraping and copyright uncertainty while closing perceived website security loopholes. The Financial Times struck a licensing deal with OpenAI in 2024 and other major news organizations are exploring licensing options. Industry expectations are that 2026 could prompt big tech firms to alter their AI-licensing stance to avoid legal risk. AI scraping tactics persist with gaps that allow entrepreneurs to bypass paywalls, but protections are gradually tightening. Institutional and corporate buyers are increasingly taking AI summarization licenses for trusted, accurate content, and enterprise RAG licensing remains a relatively untapped opportunity.

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