OpenAI Strikes a Deal to License News Corp Content
News Corp, the Murdoch-owned empire of publications like The Wall Street Journal and The New York Post, announced on Wednesday that it had agreed to a deal with OpenAI to share its content to train and service artificial intelligence chatbots.
News Corp said the multiyear agreement would allow OpenAI to use current and archived news content from News Corp’s major news outlets, including brands in the United States, United Kingdom and Australia as well as MarketWatch and Barron’s. The agreement does not include content from News Corp’s other businesses, such as its digital real estate services or HarperCollins.
“We believe an historic agreement will set new standards for veracity, for virtue and for value in the digital age,” Robert Thomson, the chief executive of News Corp, said in a statement. He described OpenAI and its chief executive, Sam Altman, as “principled partners” who “understand the commercial and social significance of journalists and journalism.”
Mr. Altman described the partnership as “a proud moment for journalism and technology.”
The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. The Wall Street Journal reported the agreement could be worth as much as $250 million over five years, citing unnamed sources. A News Corp spokesman declined to comment on the reporting.
Tim Martell, a spokesman for the Independent Association of Publishers’ Employees, which represents workers at The Journal, said in a statement that the union was concerned that it had not reached an agreement on A.I. protections in its current contract negotiations before the OpenAI deal was announced.
Many publishers have worried about the threat to their business posed by generative A.I., which uses copyrighted content to train its models and service its chatbots. The use of A.I. to answer online search queries in particular has raised concerns that publishers are not being compensated for the use of their content to train chatbots that compete with them as a source of information.
In December, The New York Times sued OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement, accusing the tech companies of using millions of its news articles without authorization. OpenAI and Microsoft have sought to dismiss parts of the complaint. In April, eight daily newspapers owned by Alden Global Capital filed a similar lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft.
Other publishers have sought to negotiate deals with the tech companies. OpenAI has already reached agreements with the German publishing giant Axel Springer, Dotdash Meredith, The Financial Times and The Associated Press, among others.
