An Indian government panel has proposed requiring AI companies to pay content creators a share of revenue for using their work to train models, a setback for companies such as OpenAI and Google that back free access to publicly available data.

The step comes as governments worldwide are fast developing regulations to resolve AI-related copyright disputes, as AI companies say they are making fair use of material generated by content owners.

AI firms should be able to access Indian content for training but should pay royalties to a central body representing copyright holders, the panel, set up in April, said in a report published on Monday.

India’s plan marks a sharp divergence from jurisdictions like the United States, where AI giants say training models on publicly available data constitutes “fair use” for which they should not be charged.

AI firms such as OpenAI and Google Gemini, which count India among their top user markets, did not respond to requests for comment.

NO OPT-OUT

Industry and the public have 30 days to challenge the Indian plan, which faces review by government officials.

OpenAI is locked in a court battle triggered by accusations from Indian news agency ANI over use of copyrighted content. The company has repeatedly denied wrongdoing and said its use of online content amounted to fair use.

While Japan gives AI firms broad exemptions for use of such content, the European Union has stricter rules that allow content owners to opt out of such use.

The Indian panel called the opt-out model ineffective, saying it unfairly forced creators to track down their own work in massive AI datasets.

Instead, if their work is used by AI platforms, they can claim funds from the centralised royalty pool.

Nasscom, an influential tech industry body that counts Google and Microsoft among its members, has formally dissented, telling the panel in comments that the mandatory fee amounts to a “tax or levy on innovation”.

The Motion Picture Association, which represents Netflix and Paramount, previously told the panel there should be no change in the copyright law, with efforts focused on licensing instead.

U.S. banks including JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo said artificial intelligence will boost productivity at their companies and likely cause job losses.

JPMorgan Chase’s consumer and community banking chief Marianne Lake said at the Goldman Sachs financial services conference the bank has doubled productivity to 6% with AI, from a previous 3% without it.

Operation specialists’ productivity is expected to grow by 40% to 50%, Lake said. The higher productivity means less impact jobs on a net basis, she said.

AI represents the biggest technological upheaval to the world economy since the rise of the internet.

It has brought trillions of dollars of investment and dizzying stock-market gains, but also a shortage of memory chips, regulatory scrutiny, and rising anxiety about job displacement.

Wells Fargo CEO Charlie Scharf said the bank has not reduced the number of people, but added “we’re getting a lot more done” because of AI.

“There are other places out there where we’re gonna be able to look at and figure out, how are we able to do more with less people,” he said.

“It’s not going to totally replace humans, but does create an opportunity to do things significantly different.”

PNC Financial CEO Bill Demchak said the bank’s head count is the same as it was 10 years ago when the bank was a third of the size – all through the process of automation and branch optimization.

“You know, the big buzz right now is it’s going to continue because AI is going to drive it. But we’ve been on a journey of automation for years, and AI may well be an accelerant,” he said.

“It will most definitely be an accelerant in our tech headcount.”

Citigroup’s incoming CFO Gonzalo Luchetti said the bank has seen a 9% productivity increase on the coding front.

“Not only can we increase the self-service ratio, which we’re already seeing and doing with our Gen AI, but in addition we’re able to assist real time those calls that end up with a human and they can be more productive,” Luchetti said, referring to the U.S. Personal Banking unit. In October, Goldman Sachs informed employees of potential job cuts and a hiring slowdown through the end of the year, according to an internal memo seen by Reuters, as the Wall Street giant aims to use AI to enhance productivity.

Calling the initiative “OneGS 3.0”, the memo said some of the priorities for its AI initiative are sales and client on-boarding process, as well as other critical areas such as lending processes, regulatory reporting, and vendor management. Bank of America plans to spend billions of dollars on technologies such as artificial intelligence to boost bankers’ productivity and bring in more revenue, its chief technology and information officer told Reuters last month.

Facebook-owner Meta holds at least a 3% stake in EssilorLuxottica, a board director at the European firm behind Ray-Ban glasses said on Tuesday.

The Meta stake has previously been reported from sources but not confirmed by either firm. The two companies are working closely together on Ray-Ban Meta AI-powered glasses.

Jose Gonzalo, executive director at French state-owned investment bank Bpifrance and an independent director on EssilorLuxottica’s board, said Meta’s investment could rise.

“It’s at least 3%,” and possibly as high as 5%, although likely at the lower end of that range, Gonzalo said. He also said that “nothing is stopping them from continuing to grow (their stake)”. Meta did not immediately reply to a request seeking comment, while EssilorLuxottica was not immediately available for comment.

Gonzalo said that Meta was not currently seeking a seat on the board.

“They are not represented on the board, they have not asked for representation on the board,” he said.

The Ray-Ban Meta glasses, which let wearers take photos, stream content and talk to an AI assistant, have boosted EssilorLuxottica’s sales this year.

However, the partnership faces growing competition from tech giants including Google, which announced plans for smart glasses with Warby Parker by 2026, and Apple, reportedly developing its own version.

South Korea’s Samsung SDI said on Wednesday that its unit Samsung SDI America has signed a deal to supply lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries to a U.S. energy infrastructure development and operations company.

The contract is valued at more than 2 trillion won ($1.36 billion), Samsung SDI said in a statement, adding that deliveries will run for three years starting in 2027.

The company did not name the customer.

The prismatic LFP batteries to be supplied under the deal will be manufactured by converting existing production lines at Samsung SDI’s U.S. plant, the battery maker said.

Samsung SDI, which is jointly building and operating an electric vehicle battery plant with Stellantis to target the U.S. EV market, said it has been shifting some production lines to energy storage system batteries in response to changes in local demand.

Energy storage batteries have a similar chemistry to automotive batteries and are used to power facilities such as data centres.

South Korean battery makers are repurposing EV battery production lines to also produce energy storage systems as they face the phasing out of U.S. subsidies.

Elon Musk’s SpaceX is moving ahead with plans for an initial public offering that would seek to raise significantly more than $30 billion and target a valuation of about $1.5 trillion, Bloomberg News reported on Tuesday.

SpaceX’s management and advisers are pursuing a listing as soon as mid-to-late 2026 for the entire company, the report said, citing people familiar with the matter. The timing of the IPO could change based on market conditions and other factors, and one person said it could slip until 2027.

Musk had said in 2020 that SpaceX planned to list Starlink several years in the future once its revenue growth became “smooth & predictable”.

SpaceX did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

SpaceX looks to use funds from the public listing to develop space-based data centers, including purchasing the chips required to run them, an idea Musk expressed interest in during a recent event with Baron Capital, according to the report.

The company is expected to make around $15 billion in revenue in 2025, increasing to between $22 billion and $24 billion in 2026, with the majority coming from Starlink, Bloomberg reported.

Media reports last week said the rocket-maker is kicking off a secondary share sale that would value it at $800 billion, pitting it against OpenAI for the title of the most valuable private company. However, Musk on Saturday dismissed the reports, calling them inaccurate.

Wikimedia Foundation, the operator of Wikipedia, on Tuesday named Bernadette Meehan its chief executive officer, tapping an administrator with deep policy expertise and federal government experience to lead the online encyclopedia.

Meehan, who most recently served as the U.S. Ambassador to Chile from 2022 to 2025, takes the helm at a critical time for the non-profit, as the rise of artificial intelligence chatbots such as ChatGPT reshapes how information is accessed online.

She will join the foundation on January 20, succeeding Maryana Iskander, who has led it since early 2022.

“Wikipedia content is core to generative AI, but it’s often lacking a clear attribution back to Wikimedia sites … so, core to the conversations that I look forward to having is how to rectify that issue,” Meehan told Reuters exclusively.

The foundation, primarily funded by small donations from the public, faces rising costs due to increased server demands as tech firms such as OpenAI and Meta Platforms scrape freely available Wikipedia data for AI model training.

“Reuse (of Wikipedia content) is a real challenge. The idea is to help large-scale re-users get the content they need, but in a way that allows all of these Big Tech firms to contribute back to the ecosystem they depend on,” Meehan said.

“Because what we don’t want to do is change the free and open nature of Wikipedia for everyone else.”

Last week at the Reuters NEXT summit, Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales said the firm was working with Big Tech on deals similar to its arrangement with Google where the tech giant pays for training access to Wikipedia content.

The Wikimedia Foundation has operated Wikipedia for nearly 25 years as a non-profit entity, relying on a global community of more than 250,000 volunteers to provide free information.

During her ambassadorship, Meehan played a key role in several tech infrastructure initiatives, including bringing Alphabet’s Google as a lead investor for the Humboldt subsea cable project.

Before that, Meehan was executive vice president of Global Programs at the Obama Foundation. She has served in both Republican and Democratic administrations, and held senior roles at the White House National Security Council.

E-commerce giant Amazon plans to make a mega investment of $35 billion — more than ₹ 3.14 lakh crore — in India by 2030 across its businesses with a focus on AI-driven digitisation, export growth and job creation, a senior company official said on Wednesday (December 10, 2025).

Making the announcement during the Amazon Smbhav Summit, Senior V.P. Emerging Markets, Amit Agarwal, said the company has set a target to quadruple exports from India to $80 billion from about $20 billion it has facilitated as of now and create an additional one million direct, indirect, induced and seasonal jobs by 2030.

“Amazon to date has invested $40 billion in India since 2010. Now we will invest another $35 billion by 2030 across all our businesses in India,” Mr. Agarwal said.

Amazon’s investment plan is twice that of Microsoft’s investment plan of $17.5 billion and close to 2.3 times that of Google’s $15 billion investment plan by 2030.

“Amazon is the largest foreign investor in India, according to a Keystone report compiled from publicly available data,” said Mr. Agarwal said.

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In May 2023, Amazon announced plans to invest $12.7 billion in India by 2030 into its local cloud and AI infrastructure across Telangana and Maharashtra. The company has already invested $3.7 billion in India between 2016 and 2022.

Mr. Agarwal said that the company has invested at scale towards building physical and digital infrastructure, including fulfilment centres, transportation networks, data centres, digital payments infrastructure and technology development.

According to the Keystone report, Amazon has digitised over 12 million small businesses and enabled $20 billion in cumulative e-commerce exports, while supporting approximately 2.8 million direct, indirect, induced and seasonal jobs across industries in India in 2024.

To push export growth from India, Amazon launched a manufacturing-focused initiative, “Accelerate Exports”, designed to connect digital entrepreneurs with trusted manufacturers while enabling manufacturers to become successful global sellers.

As part of the program, Amazon will host on-ground onboarding drives in over 10 manufacturing clusters across India, including Tirupur, Kanpur and Surat.

At the Smbhav Summit, Amazon announced a key partnership with the Apparel Export Promotion Council of India to expand and scale the programme nationwide.