OpenAI and News Corp, the owner of prominent publications like The Wall Street Journal, MarketWatch, and The Sun, have reached a significant multi-year agreement to incorporate news content from these sources into ChatGPT, as announced by News Corp on Wednesday.
This deal allows OpenAI to access both current and archived content from News Corp’s extensive range of publications, utilizing this data to further train its AI models.
While the financial details of the agreement were not fully disclosed, The Wall Street Journal reported that News Corp would receive approximately $250 million over five years in cash and credits.
In a memo to employees, News Corp Chief Executive Robert Thomson highlighted the significance of the deal, stating, “The pact acknowledges that there is a premium for premium journalism.”
He emphasized that the digital age has often favored distributors over creators, leading to challenges for many media companies. This agreement, he noted, presents a vital opportunity for News Corp to capitalize on the growing importance of high-quality journalism in the digital landscape.
The popularity of generative AI has surged since OpenAI launched ChatGPT at the end of 2022.
The effectiveness of AI-powered chatbots, however, depends heavily on the quality of the data used to train them. Historically, AI companies have scraped publicly available data from the internet without explicit consent from content creators.
Recently, these companies have started forming financial partnerships with the news industry to ensure their AI models are trained on reliable, current information.
Over the past few months, OpenAI has formed several notable partnerships, including with Reddit, the Financial Times, Dotdash Meredith, the Associated Press, German publisher Axel Springer (which owns Politico and Business Insider in the US, and Bild and Die Welt in Germany), and Spain’s Prisa Media.
Last month, News Corp also secured a deal reportedly worth between $5 and $6 million with Google to train its AI models, as reported by The Information.
It’s not just Google and OpenAI making these moves. Meta, known for integrating its AI chatbot into platforms like Facebook, Messenger, WhatsApp, and Instagram, and even developing AI-powered sunglasses, is reportedly considering similar deals with news publishers to access training data.
This development was highlighted by Business Insider just hours before the News Corp announcement.
Revenue from AI companies is becoming an increasingly vital source of income for the news industry, which has faced significant financial challenges in recent years.
Despite this, some publishers remain cautious about these agreements.
For instance, The New York Times has sued OpenAI and Microsoft over the use of their content for training AI systems.
Additionally, the NYT, the BBC, and The Verge have all blocked OpenAI from scraping their websites, indicating a continuing tension between content creators and AI developers.
This growing trend of partnerships between AI companies and news publishers underscores a shifting landscape where high-quality, authoritative content is becoming more valuable in training sophisticated AI models.
As AI continues to evolve, these collaborations may set new standards for how digital content is sourced and utilized, potentially reshaping the future of both industries.
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