Hi Dotikers!

Amazon wants to become the eBay of AI data

After months of lawsuits, reckless scraping and tense negotiations, the AI industry is discovering a revolutionary concept: paying for the content it uses. And Amazon might be the one to set the tone.

According to The Information, the e-commerce giant is preparing a marketplace where publishers could sell their content directly to AI companies. A centralized space where media outlets set their terms and AI companies come shopping for training data. Amazon isn't even the first to make this move. Microsoft launched its Publisher Content Marketplace earlier this month, already onboarding the likes of Associated Press, Condé Nast and Vox Media.

The context makes these initiatives almost inevitable. In 2025, Google traffic to news sites dropped by a third globally. Some publishers report click-through rate drops of up to 90% when an AI summary appears in search results. The historic open web model, where search engines sent traffic back in exchange for indexing, is simply dead.

These marketplaces are the only credible way forward. The current Wild West of opaque bilateral deals and endless lawsuits doesn't scale. You do have to appreciate the irony, though, of watching the same companies that hoovered up the entire web without asking now positioning themselves as the architects of a fair content economy. But hey, better late than never, especially when the lawyers are already knocking.

The real question remains: who gets to set the prices? Because if Amazon and Microsoft are playing middleman between media and AI companies, you have to wonder whether the referee isn't also a player on the pitch.

Alex