Image Credits:Raleigh News & Observer / Getty Images3:16 PM PST · February 10, 2026
The AI industry’s pursuit of licensable contented has been a messy affair, filled with lawsuits and accusations of copyright infringement. Now, arsenic tech companies look for legally harmless sources of AI grooming data, Amazon is reportedly considering launching a marketplace wherever publishers tin licence their contented straight to AI companies.
The Information reported Monday that the e-commerce elephantine has been gathering with publishing executives and alerting them to its plans to motorboat specified a marketplace. Ahead of an AWS league for publishers that occurred Tuesday, Amazon “circulated slides that notation a contented marketplace,” wrote the outlet.
Reached by TechCrunch, an Amazon spokesperson didn’t contradict the communicative but didn’t straight code the would-be marketplace either, saying only: “Amazon has built long-lasting, innovative relationships with publishers crossed galore areas of our business, including AWS, Retail, Advertising, AGI, and Alexa. We are ever innovating unneurotic to champion service our customers, but we person thing circumstantial to stock connected this taxable astatine this time.”
Amazon wouldn’t beryllium the archetypal large tech institution to instrumentality this route. Microsoft precocious launched what it calls a Publisher Content Marketplace (PCM), which it says volition springiness publishers “a caller gross stream” portion besides providing AI systems with “scaled entree to premium content.” Microsoft added that the PCM was designed to “empower publishers with a transparent economical model for licensing” their content.
The determination is simply a earthy adjacent measurement for the AI industry, which has already sought to lick the legally nebulous occupation of however copyrighted worldly ends up successful AI grooming information by forging deals with large quality outlets and media organizations. OpenAI, for instance, has already signed content-licensing partnerships with the Associated Press, Vox Media, News Corp, and The Atlantic, among others.
Those efforts haven’t been capable to stem the ineligible fallout. The combat implicit copyrighted worldly successful AI algorithms has led to a monsoon of lawsuits, and the contented is inactive being worked retired by the judicial system. New regulatory strategies to woody with the contented are being projected each the time.
Media publishers person besides fretted astir the ways successful which AI summaries — peculiarly those surfaced by Google successful its hunt results — whitethorn beryllium depressing postulation to their sites. One caller study claimed that specified summaries person had a “devastating” interaction connected the fig of users clicking done to websites. The Information’s study notes that publishers whitethorn presumption the caller marketplace-based content-sharing strategy arsenic a “more sustainable concern [than current, much constricted licensing partnerships] that volition standard up revenue” arsenic AI usage continues to escalate.
Techcrunch event
Boston, MA | June 23, 2026
Lucas is simply a elder writer astatine TechCrunch, wherever helium covers artificial intelligence, user tech, and startups. He antecedently covered AI and cybersecurity astatine Gizmodo. You tin interaction Lucas by emailing lucas.ropek@techcrunch.com.















English (US) ·