Since OpenAI left its laboratory to conquer the world with its incredible artificial intelligence tools (we don’t need to talk about how impressive ChatGPT is at this point), the company has been closely linked to demands for misappropriation and data theft.
An AI, especially a large language model (LLM), needs millions of texts, thousands of sources, and vast amounts of information to be trained and improved. And which companies have this type of content? The media.
For that reason, important companies like The New York Times and others of the same caliber have confronted OpenAI in recent months, even going as far as suing Sam Altman’s company for stealing content from their archives. For that reason, OpenAI has decided to open its wallet.
A historic agreement to train AI by paying for content
OpenAI has reached an agreement with News Corp, the media company that owns The Wall Street Journal, the New York Post, and The Daily Telegraph, among others.
According to The Wall Street Journal, the OpenAI agreement with News Corp could be worth over $250 million in the next five years “in the form of cash and credits for the use of OpenAI’s technology”.
The multi-year agreement gives OpenAI access to current and archived articles from News Corp publications to train AI and answer user questions.
This is the latest in a series of licensing agreements that OpenAI has signed with major companies and media outlets, such as The Associated Press, Financial Times, Dotdash Meredith, publisher of People, and Axel Springer (Europe’s second largest publisher).
Some media outlets have filed lawsuits against OpenAI, such as The New York Times, New York Daily News, Chicago Tribune, and The Intercept. They have accused both OpenAI and Microsoft of copyright infringement by training AI models with their work.
The partnership also includes media outlets such as Barron’s, MarketWatch, Investor’s Business Daily, FN, The Sunday Times, The Sun, and The Australian, among others, and News Corp will “share its journalistic expertise” with OpenAI to “ensure the highest journalistic standards”.
It seems that some media outlets have followed the usual strategy: if you can’t beat your enemy, join them.
