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Today, OpenAI announced it has signed a strategic partnership with British news daily Financial Times to expand the journalistic content available on ChatGPT.
Under the engagement, Financial Times’ articles will surface in response to relevant queries on ChatGPT, along with necessary summaries, quotes and links from the publication. All information coming from the FT site will be duly attributed, both parties noted in a press release.
The partnership and licensing agreement marks another significant move from OpenAI to work with a publication to enhance the quality of content available on its chatbot. Other players in the AI domain are also making similar moves to strengthen the training datasets and deliver improved performance.
Why OpenAI is partnering with FT
Ever since OpenAI brought generative AI to mainstream attention with ChatGPT, released in November 2022, disputes have arisen over whether or not AI companies should pay to license training data for their AI models rather than scraping it off the web without permission.
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Yet, many AI organizations have continued to do so in the race to improve their products with the latest and most credible information. France’s competition watchdog recently fined Google for training its Gemini chatbot on content from publishers and news agencies without notifying them.
Now, OpenAI is trying to avoid this hurdle, and maintain ChatGPT’s leadership by aggressively partnering with publications.
With the latest FT partnership, the research lab will not only surface attributed articles from the site on ChatGPT but also collaborate on developing new AI products and features for readers of the publication.
It is not exactly clear if the content will also be used for training the models but the official statement from FT does note that it will help improve OpenAI models’ “usefulness” by incorporating its journalism.
“Our partnership and ongoing dialogue with the FT is about finding creative and productive ways for AI to empower news organizations and journalists, and enrich the ChatGPT experience with real-time, world-class journalism for millions of people around the world,” Brad Lightcap, COO of OpenAI, said in a statement.
FT, on its part, emphasized that the organization remains committed to human journalism and sees this partnership as an effort to broaden the reach of its work.
“We value the opportunity to be inside the development loop as people discover content in new ways. As with any transformative technology, there is potential for significant advancements and major challenges, but what’s never possible is turning back time. It’s important for us to represent quality journalism as these products take shape – with the appropriate safeguards in place to protect the FT’s content and brand,” FT Group CEO John Ridding noted.
OpenAI’s previous media partnerships and encounters
Prior to today’s news, OpenAI partnered with Associated Press (AP), one of the world’s oldest and most well-read newswire services, to use its archived content training large language models (LLMs).
Similar deals were also inked with German media company Axel Springer, which owns leading brands including Politico and Business Insider, and the American Journalism Project (AJP), which has backed more than 40 media organizations across the U.S.
Back in January, The Information reported that OpenAI is paying between $ 1 million to $5 million to sign licensing deals with media firms.
However, these deals do not mean it has all been a smooth ride for OpenAI. The research lab has also had its fair share of troubles for training its AI models.
Last year, the New York Times filed a lawsuit against it over copyright infringement, and then, a few months ago, three more American publications – the Intercept, Raw Story and AlterNet – joined with another lawsuit claiming OpenAI and Microsoft plagiarized their copyright-protected articles to develop and operate ChatGPT.
