Sage confirms it is in talks to license content to AI firms

Sage is the latest academic publisher to confirm it is considering licensing its authors’ content for use by Artificial Intelligence companies, saying this is a "preferable route" to having its content illegally "harvested".

A Sage spokesperson told The Bookseller: "We have reason to believe many tech companies have already harvested much of our content to train large language models (LLMs)."

She added: “We believe that a preferable route is to offer clear licensing routes to our content that protect rights and include payment for the use of content by the LLM that we can pass on to authors and societies.

"In light of this, we are reviewing these types of licensing deals for AI training. We hope that training LLMs using high-quality, scientific content—such as the content we publish—will improve the accuracy and inclusivity of these models and their impact on society."

Sage also said that it "undertakes a broad range of licensing activities for our content in line with our contracts with authors, editors, and societies", confirming that it will "pay royalties on any licensing income according to those contracts".

The publisher looks set to follow in the footsteps of Taylor & Francis and Routledge, whose parent company Informa revealed it is set to make $75m from AI deals, and Wiley, which is set to make $44m from two AI partnerships. 

The Society of Authors recently wrote to AI firms demanding "appropriate remuneration" and consent for the use of their work. While the Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society (ALCS) has called on the UK government to protect "creators" from a "mass violation of their rights".

This week’s IPG 2024 Autumn Conference was dominated by a conversation around licensing. Cambridge University Press’ (CUP) Briar May outlined CUP’s "opt-in" approach, which involves asking for the consent of all authors and rights-holders before licensing their content to providers of generative AI technologies.