Amazon Explores AI Content Marketplace to Let Publishers License Directly to AI Companies

Amazon is in talks to launch an AI content marketplace where publishers can sell or license articles and media directly to developers building AI tools and products.

on Feb 11, 2026

Amazon Explores AI Content Marketplace to Let Publishers License Directly to AI Companies

The tech giant has apparently been planning to launch a marketplace for its content, which would enable media outlets and news publishers to sell their content to artificial intelligence (AI)-based developers. This was motivated by a report by The Information.

The proposed initiative seeks to create a role for Amazon as a middleman between publishers and AI companies, which will help address conflicts over how digital content is accessed and what it costs.

With the increasing prominence of generative AI technology, many publishers have complained that AI chatbots, as well as search engine summaries, incorporate their published media directly without compensation, thereby affecting their traffic, as well as their advertising income.

According to sources close to the talks, the firm has given the concept of the marketplace to industry executives as part of a preview in advance of a planned appearance in New York by the firm’s AWS division. The firm’s internal slides include the concept of the marketplace and the firm’s other products in the field of artificial intelligence, such as its Bedrock and enterprise products.

Such a move would, however, pit Amazon at odds with Microsoft, which recently announced its own AI content licensing marketplace targeting publishers and companies that are in the process of developing AI-based products. Yahoo is currently the only other content buyer announced for Microsoft's marketplace.

Some publishers support the use of usage-based models of compensation, where the amount of money being paid out is dependent on the degree of usage of the content by the AI systems. However, there is uncertainty over the chances of attracting acceptable numbers of buyers in the market.

Further, Amazon has entered into direct licensing agreements with some media companies, including a reportedly seven-figure partnership with The New York Times to license its content for Alexa and use in its artificial intelligence technologies. More recently, the e-commerce company rolled out a free web-based version of its Alexa+ assistant, which incorporates content from over 200 media organizations.

At the same time, publishers are employing various techniques provided by their infrastructure partners like Cloudflare, Akamai, and AWS to prevent unauthorized access by AI crawlers for monetization, although it is a complex process.