OpenAI has announced a multiyear partnership with News Corp, allowing the artificial intelligence powerhouse to utilize content from the media conglomerate’s extensive portfolio. This deal, potentially worth $250 million over five years, comes at a time when companies like Microsoft, OpenAI, and Google face increasing scrutiny over their use of copyrighted material to train AI models without explicit consent.
Under the terms of the agreement, OpenAI will gain access to current and archived content from a variety of News Corp publications. This includes prestigious titles such as The Wall Street Journal, the New York Post, the Times, the Sunday Times, Barron’s, and MarketWatch. The AI models will utilize this content to provide enhanced responses to user queries and improve their overall functionality.
Additionally, News Corp will provide journalistic expertise to OpenAI to ensure that the highest standards of journalism are maintained across the AI’s outputs, according to a press release from News Corp. However, specifics about whether the agreement covers editorial or opinion content remain unclear, as does the question of whether this content will be exclusive to ChatGPT’s paid model (GPT-4) or available on the free iteration.
In recent months, OpenAI has been actively expanding its content sources, securing deals with other major media companies including The Associated Press, Axel Springer in Germany, Prisa Media in Spain, France’s Le Monde newspaper, and the Financial Times. Furthermore, OpenAI has reached agreements with platforms outside mainstream media, such as the social media forum Reddit, highlighting the company’s ongoing need to diversify and enrich the data that trains its AI systems.
These licensing deals primarily allow ChatGPT to access and “scrub” content to train its models and generate more accurate and contextually relevant responses. However, the News Corp agreement stands out as it explicitly allows OpenAI to use this content to directly answer users’ questions.
In a press statement, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman highlighted the transformative potential of this deal, describing it as a pivotal moment for both journalism and technology.
All large language models (LLMs) are trained by analyzing vast amounts of data sourced from the internet. However, the unresolved issue of data ownership remains contentious. The New York Times, for instance, has taken a different approach by suing OpenAI and Microsoft for “billions” over the unauthorized use of its paywalled content, raising critical questions about the ethical and legal dimensions of AI training practices.
The broader implications of this deal for News Corp’s journalists and editors remain to be seen. According to a report by The Guardian, layoffs are anticipated at News Corp next week, adding a layer of complexity to the potential impacts of this agreement on the organization’s workforce.
As the AI and media landscapes continue to evolve, partnerships like the one between OpenAI and News Corp will undoubtedly shape the future of information dissemination. Nevertheless, the legal and ethical challenges accompanying these developments underscore the need for careful and responsible navigation in this rapidly changing domain.
For more information on the deal, you can read the full article on https://www.prweek.com/article/1874481/openai-inks-multi-year-content-deal-news-corp
