Bill Gross’s ProRata Aims to Force AI Firms to Pay Creators Fairly

Bill Gross has built a career on predicting technological shifts—and winning big. But his latest venture, ProRata, hinges on forces far beyond Silicon Valley. The platform aims to create a market where publishers and creators can track how their work informs AI-generated outputs and receive fair compensation. Gross doesn’t expect AI companies to comply voluntarily. Instead, he believes external pressures—legal battles, profitability demands, and deteriorating answer quality—will force their hand.

In an interview with Fast Company, Gross discussed his vision for ProRata, the inspiration behind it, and why he thinks some of the biggest names in AI are misaligned with this reality. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

How ProRata Works: A Fair Revenue-Sharing Model

Gross’s inspiration came from The New York Times’ lawsuit against OpenAI. He saw the legal route as one solution, but not the best one. Instead, he proposed a business model where AI companies share revenue with creators, similar to how Spotify and YouTube compensate artists.

"If I can solve the problem of unscrambling the egg—figuring out where the answer came from—then I could use that as the attribution breakdown for sharing 50% of the revenues," Gross said. After months of development, he patented his method and began recruiting publishers. Today, ProRata has signed 1,500 publications in the last two years.

Why AI Companies Will Eventually Pay Up

Gross outlined three key reasons why AI operators will have to participate:

• Legal pressure: AI firms are losing lawsuits over copyright infringement, which could force them to pay damages or settlements.
• Profitability: Once AI companies generate sufficient revenue, they’ll have the means to share profits with creators.
• Answer quality: If AI models rely on outdated or uncredited data, their output quality will decline, pushing them to update their training sets.

"No AI operators are paying money through ProRata—yet," Gross admitted. "It’s a long game." But he believes the first domino to fall could be Microsoft, which he says is "leaning in" to pioneer a revenue-sharing model. Such a move would pressure competitors to follow.

Gross’s Spinoff: Gist for Additional Revenue

To further incentivize publishers, Gross launched a spinoff called Gist. The tool allows ProRata partners to generate extra revenue by leveraging ProRata’s indexing of their work. This dual approach—attribution tracking and monetization—aims to make participation in ProRata irresistible.

The Road Ahead: Lawsuits and Market Forces

Gross acknowledged that the court cases against AI companies are still unfolding, with no clear precedent yet. However, he remains confident that market forces will ultimately prevail. "If one company does it, it will put pressure on all of them to do it," he said.

"I think the AI companies are stealing stuff from everybody. Lawsuits are one way to solve it, but a better way is a fair business model."