Navigating the Delicate Negotiations Between OpenAI and the News Industry
The veil over these negotiations was lifted recently as The New York Times filed a lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft, accusing them of copyright infringement. The claim alleges unauthorized use of The New York Times’ content for the development of AI products.
For months, some of the biggest players in the U.S. media industry have been in confidential talks with OpenAI on a tricky issue: the price and terms of licensing their content to the artificial intelligence company.
The curtain on those negotiations was pulled back this week when The New York Times sued OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement, alleging that the companies used its content without permission to build AI products.
The Times said that before suing, it had been talking with the companies for months about a deal. Other news organizations — including Gannett, the largest U.S. newspaper company; News Corp., the owner of The Wall Street Journal; and IAC, the digital colossus behind The Daily Beast and magazine publisher Dotdash Meredith — have been in talks with OpenAI, said three people familiar with the negotiations, who requested anonymity to discuss the confidential talks.
The News/Media Alliance, which represents more than 2,200 news organizations in North America, has also been talking with OpenAI about coming up with a framework for a deal that would suit its members, a person familiar with the talks said.
Microsoft, which is OpenAI’s biggest investor and is incorporating OpenAI’s technology into its products, has held talks as well.
Companies like OpenAI and Microsoft have sought licensing deals with news organizations to train AI systems that can produce humanlike prose.
In a statement, OpenAI said that it respected the rights of content creators and owners and that it believed they should benefit from AI technology, citing its deals with The Associated Press and German publishing conglomerate Axel Springer.
News publishers have had precarious relations with tech companies since losing much of their traditional advertising businesses to newcomers like Google and Facebook, and publishing executives are wary of selling their content too cheaply.
There is also fear that AI applications may provide inaccurate information citing their articles.
The agreement with the AP, announced in July, allows OpenAI to license the AP’s archive of news articles.
Axel Springer, owner of Politico and Business Insider, took a step beyond. In a recent development, the company entered a multiyear agreement granting OpenAI access to its news archive and permitting the use of freshly published articles in applications like ChatGPT. The deal, valued at over $10 million annually and inclusive of a “performance fee” linked to OpenAI’s content usage, was confirmed by a source familiar with the agreement.
