OpenAI will reportedly pay $250 million to put News Corp's publications in ChatGPT
Prime Day is still a few days away, but you don't need to wait for these epic deals. OpenAI and News Corp, the owner of The Wall Street Journal, MarketWatch, The Sun, and more than a dozen other publishing brands, have struck a multi-year deal to display news from these publications in ChatGPT, News Corp announced on Wednesday.
Access to Premium Journalism
OpenAI will be able to access both current and archived content from News Corp’s publications and use the data to further train its AI models. Neither company disclosed the terms of the deal, but a report in The Wall Street Journal estimated that News Corp would get $250 million over five years in cash and credits.
News Corp Chief Executive Robert Thomson reportedly said in a memo to employees, "The digital age has been characterized by the dominance of distributors, often at the expense of creators, and many media companies have been swept away by a remorseless technological tide. The onus is now on us to make the most of this providential opportunity."
Training AI Models with Current and Authoritative Data
Generative AI has exploded in popularity ever since OpenAI released ChatGPT at the end of 2022. The quality of the responses provided by AI-powered chatbots is only as good as the data used to train the models powering it. AI companies have previously trained their models by scraping publicly available data from the internet, often without the consent of creators.
Financial Deals with News Industry
In recent times, AI companies have been striking financial deals with the news industry to ensure that AI models are trained on current and authoritative information. OpenAI has announced partnerships with Reddit, the Financial Times, Dotdash Meredith, the Associated Press, and other major publishers.
Last month, News Corp also struck a deal reportedly between $5 and $6 million with Google to train its AI models, according to a report in The Information.
Impact on News Industry
Money from AI companies is becoming a significant revenue source for the struggling news industry. However, some publishers are still hesitant to strike these deals. The New York Times has sued OpenAI and Microsoft over using content for training AI systems, and other major publishers have blocked OpenAI from scraping their websites.
