Microsoft tests 'AI marketplace' that can pay royalties to content publishers

Microsoft is said to be in discussions with a number of US publishers about a pilot program for the Publisher Content Marketplace (PCM) – a platform that allows paying royalties when their content is used in AI products, initially the assistant Copilot.

PCM is planned to launch with a limited group of partners, then gradually expand. The idea was presented by Microsoft at its own Partner Summit in Monaco last week, with the message: 'You deserve to be paid for the value of your intellectual property' . However, the company has not announced an official launch date.

Copyright dispute between AI and publisher

Since the rise of generative AI, many publishers have accused AI labs of large-scale copyright infringement, leading to a series of lawsuits. Most notably, the New York Times sued Microsoft and OpenAI in December 2023, claiming that millions of articles were illegally used to train AI models. In addition, the Authors Guild and many famous authors such as George RR Martin and John Grisham also filed a lawsuit against OpenAI on similar grounds.

Major media conglomerates are now calling on the US government to intervene and issue regulations that force AI companies to ask permission and pay for content. They are also concerned about the phenomenon of AI 'illusion' - when models create false information but mistakenly attribute it to reputable newspapers.

Microsoft is the first major tech company to attempt to build a professional AI trading platform for publishers, according to Axios, while many other companies like OpenAI still rely heavily on individual licensing agreements.

In addition to Microsoft, Cloudflare is also developing a technical solution at the network infrastructure level. The company wants to allow websites to charge AI bots for scraping data, even planning to revive the HTTP 402 ( Payment Required ) response code to handle automated microtransactions between bots and web servers.

David Pac

Update 26 September 2025