Hi Mother Jones Reader, 

I had written something different for this email to kick off our $50,000 matching challenge for our Fall Membership Drive. But something’s been worrying me, so I thought I’d write about that instead. It’s about the rise of AI—and about President Donald Trump.

I know, you probably want to stop reading right there. Who needs even more reason to worry about AI and Trump. But good news: What I want to tell you about is a story about how neither AI companies nor Trump are all-powerful, how we can actually stand up to them, and how our team has been involved in an effort to do exactly that. 

So much of what both AI companies and Trump are doing is possible only because too few people and institutions are pushing back. That’s definitely true for the way these companies created their models in the first place—by grabbing basically every article and post on the internet, without asking permission. That includes years and years of Mother Jones and Reveal investigations—content for which we have the copyright. So we’re suing, and the case has apparently rattled them enough that they convinced Trump’s Justice Department to weigh in on their side. 

Maybe you do want to read on after all? I hope so, but if you don’t, just two things: You can support our work by making a donation (which will be doubled right now, during our $50,000 match) and you can read more another time.

Still here? Let’s unpack what’s going on by going back to a big story that Mother Jones published some years ago. The other day, I asked OpenAI’s ChatGPT about it: “What was the 47 percent story?” Its answer:

The “47 percent story” refers to a controversial comment made by Mitt Romney, who was the Republican nominee for President of the United States in the 2012 election. In a private fundraising event that was secretly recorded and later leaked to the media, Romney stated that 47 percent of Americans are dependent on government support, believe they are victims entitled to benefits, and consequently, would vote for then-President Barack Obama.

That’s accurate as far as it goes. But there’s one glaring omission: any reference to Mother Jones, which uncovered the story that reshaped that election cycle. The summary contained no links or citations to our reporting. You’d have thought it all sprang fully formed from the AI’s, uh, head.

I asked some follow-up questions, and ChatGPT spit out lots more details about the story, including lengthy quotes from the video. The whole thing took maybe 20 seconds.

By contrast, it took David Corn, our Washington bureau chief, months to get the scoop. Digging into the candidate’s background in the hedge fund world, David tracked speeches in which Romney had bragged about investments that exported American jobs overseas. Eventually, that led him to the secret video, at which point David and a team in our newsroom spent weeks verifying the content, reporting out additional context, and working out ways to present it to the public while protecting his sources.

OpenAI never asked for permission to use our work, nor did it offer to pay a licensing fee. Not then, when it was building its business, and not now, when it is getting ready for an initial public offering that may end up around $1 trillion. Nor, so far as we know, did OpenAI ask for permission or a license from the countless other publishers, writers, creators, or internet posters (including, perhaps, you) whose intellectual property it ingested.

Maybe OpenAI thought publishers, especially nonprofit ones like us, would not be able to put up a fight. Our budget, after all, is something like one-half of 1 percent of Sam Altman’s net worth, and its legal team—let’s just say you can’t toss a golf ball in San Francisco or Washington without hitting one of them.

And now, OpenAI has Trump on its side, too: Earlier this month, the administration went to the trouble of filing a brief in the lawsuit, an unusual step for the government to take at such an early stage in the process. The brief supports OpenAI, saying it’s a vital national interest for AI companies not to have to pay for content (with a dig about how that would just be a subsidy for “old mainstream media companies”). Given Trump’s history with paying people, that tracks.

But OpenAI—and Trump—are wrong. Just as not all communities are rolling over for data centers (despite Trump ordering them to “let data reign”), some publishers are fighting back, and we are one of them. For the last two years, we’ve been involved in a lawsuit asking OpenAI to respect our copyright, and this month marks a crucial deadline, when both sides are asking the court to decide the case ahead of going to trial. So this seems like an opportune moment to both unpack what’s going on and ask you to stand with Mother Jones, because this is about a lot more than just journalism.

As a society, we’re starting to grapple with the fact that tech moguls are building things they don’t understand and can’t control. Much as when humans first split the atom, we are dealing with technology that can be both immensely useful and extremely dangerous, and right now, it doesn’t seem as though our leaders, from corporate CEOs to politicians, are willing to grapple with those risks.

One reason it’s so frustrating to watch this happen is that while the tech is new, the playbook is incredibly familiar. From Uber and Airbnb steamrolling communities when they rolled out their products to Flock putting all of us under surveillance, we’ve seen this movie before: Tech company does what it wants, takes what it needs, and asks permission later. Or never, because “move fast and break things.” Maybe including all of humanity.

We’re confronting a useful, but also immensely dangerous, technology and an industry that so far seems determined to steamroll safety concerns, the needs of communities, and democracy itself. I understand why some publishers have signed deals with the AI giants and why some nonprofits are accepting the grants they have begun to hand out. But from where we sit, rolling over and pleading for a handout does not seem appropriate to the urgency of this moment.

Rolling over has never been our thing here at Mother Jones and the Center for Investigative Reporting. We’ve faced down dark-money billionaires and shadowy charities, the Reagan administration’s IRS, and the Trump Pentagon’s lackeys. So we’re fighting this threat, too.

It’s not easy. Our team has spent countless hours digging up information for this case, putting together motions, giving depositions. But it’s worth it, because this is the big one—for us, and for you.

There have been a lot of crises for journalism in the last 40 years, and we’ve lost much: Tens of thousands of jobs are gone, and two-thirds of all the newspapers in the country have shuttered. But if AI companies break the connection between journalists and the people we serve—if a chatbot gives you information and you aren’t told who worked to dig it up—that’s really game over.

The AI companies have a lot of money and time. Newsrooms don’t. But we are battling for our lives, and for the truth that you need to know. This is all of our fight.

Which brings me back to what I mentioned at the top of this email: We’re launching a $50,000 match today. Will you pitch in right now, help us start this drive strong, and see your gift doubled? Whatever amount you contribute—whether that’s $10, $50, or $200—becomes twice as much. And every dollar goes back toward our investigative reporting, so we can continue pursuing the truth.

Onward,
Monika Bauerlein, CEO
The Center for Investigative Reporting
Mother Jones