This weekend, The Times newspaper covered the transformation of the communications industry, describing Gen AI optimisation as ‘dark arts’. Read the full article here (£).
“As a result, firms such as Edelman now focus on manipulating the online presence of a client to make them appear in a certain way on AI platforms. Payne calls this “pre-bunking” — flooding the internet with content that puts forward a positive narrative about their client almost as a protective buffer should controversy arise.”
Now, you don’t exactly “flood the internet”, which was the rather catastrophic description Sir Martin Sorrell infamously proposed in a BBC Radio 4 debate in December 2025. The actual actions are more data-led, audience-centric, and targeted.
However, we can all agree that reputation used to just live in people’s heads. Now it also lives inside the AI models your stakeholders reach for when they want a quick answer. That changes the job. It is no longer enough to know which journalists and titles influence people. You need to know which ones influence the machines.
What the data shows
So I went looking. I pulled the Gen AI policies of 4,467 news titles, across 105 markets and 72 languages.
Most publishers won’t tell you where they stand. Almost 97% don’t publicly disclose their position. Only a small handful have a confirmed licensing deal, and fewer still have declared they are blocking.
But silence is not the same as an open door. Among the big lead-market titles, nearly a third block at least one AI model from sourcing their news. Around one in twelve block them entirely. Globally, roughly a quarter block at least one model. The list includes the names you would expect to be everywhere in an AI answer: The New York Times, CNN, The Telegraph, The Economist.
Where deals do exist, they cluster. A few large groups have signed the licences, with OpenAI the most common partner. And the lawyers are busy: I found 87 titles now litigating against AI companies, the NYT, the BBC and the Wall Street Journal among them.
Why this matters
A publisher’s AI policy will rarely make a front page story. However, it increasingly decides whether your company shows up in the AI answers your stakeholders trust, and how you show up. Favourably. Competitively. Or not at all.
Next time you build a media strategy, don’t just map the outlets and the journalists. Map their AI policies too. It is an edge most of your competitors haven’t spotted yet.
Want to know where a specific title, sector or market sits? Happy to have a conversation, and look out for a follow-up post in a couple of weeks…
Methodology: this analysis draws on Inkline, a news intelligence platform I built independently (available on the Apple App Store). It uses a proprietary RSS and robots.txt scanning engine to monitor publisher feeds and capture Gen AI policy information, classifying titles as licensed, blocking or unknown, along with ownership, AI partnerships, litigation, and the specific crawlers they allow or restrict.
Oooh 👏 — ‘Next time you build a media strategy, don’t just map the outlets and the journalists. Map their AI policies too.’