Last time I argued that a foundation model is a supplier whenever its output goes into something you deliver, and that since the model makers will not sign a services agreement, the controls have to sit on your side. Five of them: an acceptance criterion, a tolerance stated as a rate, change detection, a qualified alternate, and a process owner. Every one is something a vendor management function already knows how to do, and almost nobody is running that process.
What the major media companies are running instead is a hold: extremely limited commercial model use on anything that touches content, over IP infringement concerns. I think that is a defensible position, and I will come back to why. But a hold on commercial models governs your own people. It says nothing about your vendors, and most media companies are not the ones calling the model. They buy localization and QC from vendors, and the vendors are the ones holding the API keys. Unless somebody wrote the hold into the vendor con…
