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NP Nilay Patel Nilay Patel Editor-in-chief of The Verge, which he co-founded in 2011, covering consumer technology, platforms and the policy around them.

“I think these companies are villains now. Like truly, if you look at the polling, they are not beloved. AI is not beloved, particularly with young people. The idea that AI is theft is not beloved with young people. That gives you an opportunity to actually turn the screws harder to say, maybe you shouldn't bear these risks. Maybe the artists should be the ones getting rich, not the AI companies.”

Decoder with Nilay Patel · Tech Strategy & Big Tech · November 2026

“I think these companies are villains now. Like truly, if you look at the polling, they are not beloved. AI is not beloved, particularly with young people. The idea that AI is theft is not beloved with young people. That gives you an opportunity to actually turn the screws harder to say, maybe you shouldn't bear these risks. Maybe the artists should be the ones getting rich, not the AI companies.” — Nilay Patel, Decoder with Nilay Patel

Context

Glazier had said AI companies will absorb any copyright liability and still have big IPOs. Nilay Patel disagrees, arguing public opinion has shifted since Google won its fair-use fights, and asks whether the music industry is using that.

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Transcript

Decoder with Nilay Patel Around 48:24 into the episode
Nilay Patel

like this could be a big cost of doing business going forward. And yet, they're going to have a spectacular IPO, right?

Mitch Glazier

Despite those risks, which means that they're willing to bear them and they're also willing to accept the cost if and when that comes and it is secured.

Nilay Patel

Actually, I have a different view on that. And it's related to the beginning of our conversation, right? You, you said it was, I think you gave a quote to the Los Angeles Times where you said being the RIA is more fun now because the consumers are on your side fighting the AI giants instead of you fighting consumers. I get that. Like the valence of the RIAA and the culture may have changed. I'm sure we'll get some people in our comments saying it hasn't, but in general, it's changed, right? You're on the side of the artist fighting the giants. Google won all of those cases about fair use when it was a baby, right? They had slides in the office and they were a startup and no judge had ever used the internet before. And they're like, I love YouTube. And Viacom, you're posting your videos on YouTube because your people love YouTube and you know the audience is there. And there was something very happy about the tech industry at that time. Google as a company was a hero. I think these companies are villains now. Like truly, if you look at the polling, they are not beloved. AI is not beloved, particularly with young people. The idea that AI is theft is not beloved with young people.…

Speaker 3

we're putting it into policy. You know, we're everything is an

Mitch Glazier

arc, as you know, but in the beginning of a disruption, you try to put into policy the basic rights that are going to allow the creators to control their creation, to charge what they want for their creation, and to develop the licensing deals that they feel they want to develop. And it's gotten to…

Nilay Patel

and say that the baby punk rocker in me is, we could do another full hour on artists now have the opportunity to sell their catalog to Goldman Sachs. It's another hour, but I know it's there.

Speaker names come from our own diarization. The position is estimated from where the line sits in the episode.

More from Decoder with Nilay Patel

“Spotify is saying, well, we'll only disclose or label a recording as AI in the credits. Well, how many people look at the credit? … If people get recommendations in their algorithm, like if you like this song, you'll also like this one, and when you listen to it, it turns out it was AI and you didn't know it was AI and you feel deceived, that's when they've got a giant problem, because they're responsible for that recommendation. They're the one that fed that to you.” — Mitch Glazier, Decoder with Nilay Patel “None of us right now has a right to our own voice or likeness under federal law. Most of us don't even have it under state law. State law, which is called right of publicity, usually only applies to advertising or endorsements… It seems so weird in a country that was founded on individual liberty and individual rights that we wouldn't have an individual right to ourselves.” — Mitch Glazier, Decoder with Nilay Patel