Two of the nation’s largest media companies, Vox Media and The Atlantic, have joined a growing list of news organizations that have decided to partner with OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT. Both parties will benefit from the deals, announced on Wednesday (May 29), as OpenAI will gain credibility as it trains its new A.I. models while the media companies gain access to data that may help with their advertising business. Under the agreements, OpenAI will be allowed to use news articles from publications owned by The Atlantic and Vox Media to train the GPT models. ChatGPT will then cite those articles in response to users’ queries and link back to the media companies’ websites.
In turn, Vox Media—the publisher of The Verge, Vox, Eater, The Cut, New York Magazine and SB Nation—will use OpenAI’s technology to bolster advertising capabilities and audience targeting on its first-party data platform, Forte, and to improve its gift-matching site, The Strategist Gift Scout. Meanwhile, The Atlantic, one of the oldest magazines in the U.S., said it will experiment with using OpenAI’s technology to better serve its readers and inform its journalism. The Atlantic’s product team will then provide OpenAI’s leadership with feedback from these experiments and share their thoughts on how A.I. could be leveraged to improve the broader media landscape.
“We believe that people searching with A.I. models will be one of the fundamental ways that people navigate the web in the future,” Atlantic CEO Nicholas Thompson said in a statement. It is unclear how much OpenAI is paying Vox Media and The Atlantic to license their articles, as it seeks to expand its media deals.
Here are other notable media deals OpenAI has struck in recent months:
The Associated Press (AP)
The news wire announced its own partnership with OpenAI in July 2023, under which OpenAI was allowed to license AP stories dating back to 1985. The AP said the partnership “builds upon its efforts to make its journalism more effective,” noting that it has been automating corporate earning reports since 2014 and subsequently began using automated stories to preview and recap some sporting events.
Axel Springer
The German publisher was among the first to announce a partnership with OpenAI in December 2023, allowing the tech giant to cite its articles in ChatGPT answers. OpenAI’s chief operating officer Brad Lightcap touted the partnership at the time as a way to “help provide people with new ways to access quality, real-time news content.” Axel Springer-owned publications include:
- Politico
- Business Insider
- German newspapers Bild and Welt
The Financial Times
The Financial Times partnered with OpenAI in April, allowing the ChatGPT maker to use its library to create text, images and code. The deal also enables ChatGPT to cite and attribute articles from the Financial Times.
FT Group CEO John Ridding assured the public that the company is still “committed to human journalism, as produced by our unrivaled newsroom” and said the agreement “will broaden the reach of that work, while deepening our understanding of reader demand and interests.” The deal is believed to be worth $5 million to $10 million, according to The Verge.
DotDash Meredith
DotDash Meredith is one of the more recent media companies to sign a deal with OpenAI, striking an agreement in early May. Under the partnership, OpenAI would properly cite articles from the publisher’s many outlets in its automated responses, and DotDash Meredith would collaborate with the tech firm to create new A.I. products and features for its readers. The tech firm also agreed to leverage its A.I. to help bolster DotDash Meredith’s ad-targeting product, D/Cipher.
In a statement announcing the partnership, DotDash Meredith CEO Neil Vogel noted that he has “not been shy about the fact that A.I. platforms should pay publishers for their content, and that content must be appropriately attributed. “This deal is a testament to the great work OpenAI is doing on both fronts to partner with creators and publishers and ensure a healthy internet for the future,” he said. DotDash Meredith is the publisher of:
- People
- Better Homes and Gardens
- Investopedia
- InStyle
- Food & Wine
News Corp
The Rupert Murdoch-owned media conglomerate announced earlier this month that it has signed onto a multi-year agreement with OpenAI to cite its stories in response to user queries. The deal is estimated to be worth over $250 million over the next five years, according to the Wall Street Journal—a subsidiary of News Corp. Other publications that will be included in the partnership are:
- Barron’s
- MarketWatch
- Investor’s Business Daily
- New York Post
- The Sun
- The Times
- The Sunday Times
- The Daily Telegraph
- The Australian
- The Courier Mail
- Herald Sun
The deal does not include content from Fox News.
(Updated June 27) Time magazine
Time, owned by Salesforce founder Marc Benioff, struck a multiyear content licensing deal and strategic partnership with OpenAI, giving the A.I. company access to the magazine 101 years of archives to train large language models. The deal also gives OpenAI access to Time’s real-time news content to help answer user queries in ChatGPT.