Paying artists for AI training isn't just about fairness; if platforms don't pay, the AI will eventually 'starve' from eating its own low-quality output.
April 1, 2026
Original Paper
Content Platform GenAI Regulation via Compensation
SSRN · 6411538
The Takeaway
The paper argues that unregulated Generative AI usage eventually 'contaminates' the training data source for future models by replacing high-quality human work with AI clones. It reveals that compensation schemes for creators are actually a survival strategy for the AI platforms themselves to maintain data quality and profit.
From the abstract
The use of Generative AI (GenAI) for creative content generation has gained popularity in recent years. GenAI allows creators to generate contents that are increasingly becoming indistinguishable to the human-generated counterpart at a much lower cost. While GenAI reshapes the competitive landscape of the contents market, the original creators were typically not compensated for their works that were used in the GenAI training. On the other hands, the widespread adoption of GenAI threatens to rep