OpenAI and News Corp sign major deal to boost ChatGPT

OpenAI, the artificial intelligence (AI) company behind the world’s most popular chatbot ChatGPT, has announced a major multi-year partnership with media titan News Corp.

The deal, rumored to be worth $250 million over five years, grants OpenAI unprecedented access to a vast repository of journalistic content from the Wall Street Journal and New York Post owner’s huge portfolio of media brands.

News comes to ChatGPT

The deal will allow OpenAI to surface content from the Murdoch family-owned giant in response to user queries on ChatGPT.

Moreover, the American tech firm will harness News Corp’s immense database of articles to train and refine its AI models, with the aim of enhancing the performance and capabilities of ChatGPT and its other offerings.

Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, expressed his enthusiasm for the partnership, stating, “Our partnership with News Corp is a proud moment for journalism and technology. We greatly value News Corp’s history as a leader in reporting breaking news around the world, and are excited to enhance our users’ access to its high-quality reporting.”

News Corp chief Robert Thomson hailed the deal as a “historic agreement” that will “set new standards for veracity, for virtue, and for value in the digital age.” This partnership comes at a time when companies at the forefront of generative AI technology are increasingly seeking formal agreements with publishers to sidestep legal and copyright issues when using content to train their AI models.

News organizations adapt to AI

If you can’t beat them, join them. Anticipating the growing trend of people using AI chatbots for more and more services, like news, media organizations have begun to work with AI companies to ensure they are not left behind.

The worry among news execs is that if people only need to ask an AI chatbot what the main stories are of the day and no longer need to visit their websites then their revenue will be hit substantially. We’ve already seen this month Google’s move towards being a one-stop shop for all your inquiries as it begins to surface AI-generated results.

OpenAI’s landmark deal with News Corp follows in the footsteps of similar agreements with the Financial Times, Axel Springer, and the Associated Press. Google, a big competitor to OpenAI in the generative AI arena, has also secured deals with News Corp and Reddit to access their content for AI training purposes.

As part of these partnerships, tech firms often develop AI-powered products and features that publishers then integrate into their platforms to help train large language models (LLM) making them smarter and more up-to-date on world events.

Featured image: Generated by Ideogram