«Content Taken for Free»: Pia Guggenbühl on AI Providers and the Future of Publishing
In the latest episode of ComSumCast, Pia Guggenbühl, director of the Swiss Media Publishers Association, speaks with Reto Lipp about AI providers that use journalistic content without permission, the partial success of the Gössi motion, and the grim forecast from Ringier CEO Marc Walder. Her conclusion: The situation is serious, but the idea that only three media brands will survive is «unrealistic.».
Pia Guggenbühl has been leading the Swiss Media Publishers Association for a year and a half. She represents Ringier, TX Group, CH Media, and the NZZ, as well as about 60 smaller publishers. She knows the situation inside and out: In 2010, the print advertising market in Switzerland was still worth 3 billion francs; today, it stands at 650 million. That’s a 78 percent decline.
«Unsolicited, Unpaid»
The most pressing topic of this episode is artificial intelligence. AI providers like Google and OpenAI scrape journalistic content and present it as their own answers—«unasked, unpaid,» as Guggenbühl puts it. Clicks on publishers’ websites are drying up. What began with the zero-click rate in traditional search is now intensifying dramatically with AI-generated answers.
Guggenbühl quotes the publisher of The New York Times, whom she met at the International Publishers Association conference in Marseille: When AI providers need chips, they buy them. Engineers are paid good wages, and electricity bills are paid. Only the content is taken for free. Ringier CEO Marc Walder calls this «the greatest theft of all time»—and rightly so, says Guggenbühl.
A Milestone Victory with the Gössi Motion
Other countries are taking the legal route; the New York Times is filing lawsuits costing millions in the U.S. Switzerland is opting for measured regulation. Parliament has approved a motion by Council of States member Petra Gössi that calls for the protection of intellectual property rights, including against AI providers—and this motion is now being implemented. The opposition was considerable: committee members told Guggenbühl that they had never experienced such intense lobbying.
The association is not fighting this battle alone. In the Creative Industries AI Alliance, the music, literature, and film industries stand alongside publishers. Internationally, there is ongoing dialogue with the European News Publishers Association and the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN-IFRA). Guggenbühl also points to Germany, where Google was held accountable for AI-generated responses that damaged reputations. And she welcomes the fact that SRG intends to block its content from AI providers.
Walders« prediction: »unrealistic”
Marc Walder, CEO of Ringier, recently predicted that in the digital world, only *20 Minuten*, *Blick*, and *NZZ* would survive economically. Pia Guggenbühl understands Walder’s prediction but disagrees: Switzerland, with its direct democracy and federalism, needs media diversity—especially the roughly 60 small publishers in the association—and the association will work to ensure that this prediction does not come true.
This is because the VOX post-vote surveys, in particular, consistently show that voters still rely primarily on the voting booklet and printed publications as their first sources of information before referendums. She considers it «unrealistic» that in ten years there will be only three major private media outlets left.
Potential in the Advertising Market
The interview also covers the advertising campaign «Credibility Works Better,» developed with Jung von Matt, the 46 percent of the Swiss population who are news-deprived, media literacy in schools, and Guggenbühl’s dual political role as a municipal council member and head of finance in Küsnacht.
ComSumCast is funded by the Zurich Press Association and the Zurich Public Relations Association—recorded and produced at Castalavista by Christoph Soltmannowski. The episode is available on Apple Podcasts and as a videocast on YouTube and Spotify.
