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OpenAI, maker of the viral AI chatbot ChatGPT, has netted another news licensing deal in Europe, adding London\u2019s Financial Times to a growing list of publishers it\u2019s paying for content access.<\/p>\n
As with earlier OpenAI\u2019s publisher licensing deals, financial terms of the arrangement are not being made public.<\/p>\n
The latest deal looks a touch cozier than other recent OpenAI publisher tie-ups \u2014 such as with German giant Axel Springer<\/a> or with the AP<\/a>, Le Monde and Prisa Media<\/a> in France and Spain respectively \u2014 as the pair are referring to the arrangement as a \u201cstrategic partnership and licensing agreement\u201d. (Though Le Monde\u2019s CEO also referred to the \u201cpartnership\u201d it announced with OpenAI in March<\/a> as a \u201cstrategic move\u201d.)<\/p>\n However we understand it\u2019s a non-exclusive licensing arrangement \u2014 and OpenAI is not taking any kind of stake in the FT Group.<\/p>\n On the content licensing front, the pair said the deal covers OpenAI use of the FT\u2019s content for training AI models and, where appropriate, for displaying in generative AI responses produced by tools like ChatGPT, which looks much the same as its other publisher deals.<\/p>\n The strategic element appears to center on the FT boosting its understanding of generative AI, especially as a content discovery tool, and what\u2019s being couched as a collaboration aimed at developing \u201cnew AI products and features for FT readers\u201d \u2014 suggesting the news publisher is eager to expand its use of the AI technology more generally.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThrough the partnership, ChatGPT users will be able to see select attributed summaries, quotes and rich links to FT journalism in response to relevant queries,\u201d the FT wrote in a press release<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n The publisher also noted that it became a customer of OpenAI\u2019s ChatGPT Enterprise product earlier this year. It goes on to suggest it wants to explore ways to deepen its use of AI, while expressing caution over the reliability of automated outputs and potential risks to reader trust.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is an important agreement in a number of respects,\u201d wrote FT Group CEO John Ridding in a statement. \u201cIt recognises the value of our award-winning journalism and will give us early insights into how content is surfaced through AI.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n He went on, \u201cApart from the benefits to the FT, there are broader implications for the industry. It\u2019s right, of course, that AI platforms pay publishers for the use of their material. OpenAI understands the importance of transparency, attribution, and compensation \u2014 all essential for us. At the same time, it\u2019s clearly in the interests of users that these products contain reliable sources.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Large language models (LLMs) such as OpenAI\u2019s GPT, which powers the ChatGPT chatbot, are notorious for their capacity to fabricate information or \u201challucinate.\u201d This is the polar opposite of journalism, where reporters work to verify that the information they provide is as accurate as possible.<\/p>\n So it\u2019s actually not surprising that OpenAI\u2019s early moves toward licensing content for model training have centered on journalism. The AI giant may hope this will help it fix the \u201challucination\u201d problem. (A line in the PR suggests the partnership will \u201chelp improve [OpenAI\u2019s] models\u2019 usefulness by learning from FT journalism.\u201d)<\/span><\/p>\n There\u2019s another major motivating factor in play here too, though: Legal liability around copyright.<\/p>\n Last December<\/a> the New York Times announced it\u2019s suing OpenAI, alleging that its copyrighted content was used by the AI giant to train models without a license. OpenAI disputes that<\/a> but one way to close down the risk of further lawsuits from news publishers, whose content was likely scraped off the public Internet (or otherwise harvested) to feed development of LLMs is to pay publishers for using their copyrighted content.<\/p>\n For their part, publishers stand to gain some cold hard cash from the content licensing.<\/p>\n OpenAI told TechCrunch it has \u201caround a dozen\u201d publisher deals signed (or \u201cimminent\u201d), adding that \u201cmany\u201d more are in the works.<\/p>\n Publishers could also, potentially, acquire some readers \u2014 such as if users of ChatGPT opt to click on citations that link to their content. However, generative AI could also cannibalize the use of search engines over time, diverting traffic away from news publishers\u2019 sites. If that kind of disruption is coming down the pipe, some news publishers may feel a strategic advantage in developing closer relationships with the likes of OpenAI.<\/p>\n Getting involved with Big AI carries some reputational pitfalls for publishers, too.<\/p>\n Tech publisher CNET, which last year rushed to adopt generative AI as a content production tool \u2014 without making its use of the tech abundantly clear to readers<\/a> \u2014 took further knocks to its reputation when journalists at Futurism found scores of errors<\/a>\u00a0in machine-written articles it had published.<\/p>\n The FT has a well-established reputation for producing quality journalism. So it will certainly be interesting to see how it further integrates generative AI into its products and\/or newsroom processes.<\/p>\n Last month it announced<\/a> a GenAI tool for subscribers \u2014 which essentially shakes out to offering a natural language search option atop two decades of FT content (so, basically, it\u2019s a value-add aimed at driving subscriptions for human-produced journalism).<\/p>\n Additionally, in\u00a0Europe legal uncertainty is clouding use of tools like ChatGPT over a raft of<\/a> privacy law concerns<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n