Current Affairs

Invest in Open Infrastructure (IoI) Publishes Landscape Scan on “Sustaining the Commons in the AI Economy”

April 21, 2026

From Invest in Open Infrastructure (IoI):

As part of our Building Resilient Infrastructure through Dialogue, Growth, and Exchange (BRIDGE) project, Invest in Open Infrastructure (IOI) is pleased to release the first outcome of our research: a landscape scan of the challenges and strategies for bridging AI companies and open curated collections.

Curated collections, such as digital archives, open access journals, scientific data repositories, preprint servers, and knowledge graphs, form part of the digital commons: the shared pool of open resources made freely accessible online. Used regularly by researchers, the public, and commercial entities, this digital commons benefits every sector of society. Maintained largely by academic institutions, nonprofits, governments, and volunteer communities, these curated collections represent a public good built on decades of labour, public and private funding, and an ethos of open knowledge sharing. Their sustainability is inseparable from the sustainability of open science and democratic access to information.

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To understand this landscape, key themes explored in the report include:

The strain on infrastructure: How AI bot traffic is overwhelming servers, inflating costs, and triggering service disruptions at open curated collections.

The limitations of current approaches: Why technical, legal, and market-based mechanisms face significant challenges in protecting the commons at scale.

The risks of defensive restrictions: How access controls intended to protect collections may paradoxically accelerate data consolidation among well-resourced corporations.

The tension of voluntary compliance: Many current approaches rely on voluntary compliance, with legal repercussions as enforcement mechanisms; what else could be done to encourage cooperative behaviour? Wrestling with whether enlightened self-interest can succeed where legal and technical frameworks have fallen short.

The possibilities of the commons: AI companies and collection stewards both have much to gain from exploring the commons as a shared space for investment and cooperation.