First, OpenAI's introduction of the Copyright Shield program shows their new approach to navigating the world of digital rights, which is a pretty gray area at the moment. This initiative aims to protect business users of tools like ChatGPT and DALL-E from copyright infringement claims, reflecting the growing impact of generative AI in content creation.

At the same time, there's a notable increase in online publications adopting paywalls, driven by the need for sustainable revenue in the face of declining print revenues. More than two-thirds of leading newspapers in the EU and US now operate paywalls, a significant rise since 2017.

This trend, I believe, will be further accelerated by concerns around generative AI. As these advanced tools become more prevalent, original content creators might increasingly turn to paywalls as a means to safeguard their work from being used to train AI models, thereby protecting their intellectual property and ensuring fair compensation for their efforts.

The question is; how much do we care about original ideas? Will it be enough to pay for original (i.e. human-made) content on a large enough scale for creatives to make ends meet?