Amazon in talks with publishers about an AI-powered content trading platform

According to the two andAmazonSources familiar with the project revealed that Amazon has informed publishing industry executives of its plans to launch a...Content trading platformThis allows publishers to sell their content to companies that provide AI products.

This discussion takes place against the backdrop of a power struggle between publishers and AI companies over how AI firms can acquire online content—whether for model training or answering user queries. Publishers have been actively pursuing...Charged based on content usageThe compensation model. Last week,MicrosoftWe have just launched a service that connects publishers with AI buyers.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) will host a publisher conference in New York on Tuesday. Ahead of the event, AWS has distributed presentations mentioning its content platform. Slides seen by *The Information* show that AWS categorizes the platform alongside core AI tools such as Bedrock and Quick Suite when introducing products available to publishers.

An Amazon spokesperson stated that the company "has established long-standing, innovative partnerships with publishers across multiple business areas," including AWS cloud services, retail, advertising, AI, and Alexa. "We are always innovating together to best serve our customers, but we have no specific information to share at this time."

Publishers are increasingly complaining that the proliferation of AI chatbots and AI-driven search summaries has led to decreased traffic to their websites from search engines, hurting readership and advertising revenue. For example, The Washington Post attributed its layoffs last week in part to declining search traffic and the rise of generative AI.

The publishers' predicament has also led to legal disputes. For example, in September of last year, Penske Media, the parent company of Rolling Stone magazine, sued...GoogleThe company claims that adding AI summaries to search results harmed its revenue. Google has filed for dismissal of the lawsuit, arguing that it had no obligation to drive traffic to Penske or to cooperate on terms preferred by Penske.

Companies including Amazon have signed AI-related licensing agreements directly with some publishers, typically for fixed fees. Amazon reportedly pays The New York Times an annual fee.More than millionThis allows them to use news articles, NYT Cooking recipes, and other content in the Alexa assistant and train its AI model.

When Amazon launched the free version of its Alexa+ chatbot last week, it stated that it had partnered with over 200 media outlets, including The Washington Post, Forbes, and Time magazine, to provide content for Alexa. Any Amazon account holder can now access the free version through a web browser, but usage is limited.

Publishers are increasingly seekingPay based on the frequency with which AI companies use the content.They believe this model is a more sustainable business model that will expand revenue as users' AI usage increases.

Cloudflare and Akamai, which provide website operation support for publishers, began offering tools in the second half of 2025 to help publishers block AI crawlers from scraping content and charge AI companies for access. AWS also has a similar service, CloudFront.

Microsoft began piloting its own marketplace platform last year, integrating it with publishers such as People Inc. and Condé Nast. When announcing its full rollout last week, it stated that the platform had been tested using the commercial and consumer versions of Microsoft Copilot before being made available to external buyers.

However, there are still some technical challenges in getting AI companies to pay for their services. For example, some AI crawlers sometimes impersonate human users, hindering content protection measures.

Several publishing industry executives stated that, overall, publishers are concerned about content trading platforms.Insufficient demand from AI buyersFor example, Microsoft has only publicly named Yahoo as its content buyer so far (Yahoo launched a new AI search chatbot at the end of January).