OpenAI’s deal streak with publishers continues
OpenAI’s deal streak with publishers continued this week with news of a content licensing agreement with IAC-owned Dotdash Meredith. The generative AI company now has the right to ingest and surface content from over 50 individual publications thanks to deals with various global publishers.
Financial terms of those deals have not been disclosed, but publishers have positioned them as wins for their businesses and as evidence that OpenAI fairly values access to their content.
However, questions remain around how much leverage publishers realistically have in licensing negotiations, and whether publishers are essentially taking whatever they can get from OpenAI for fear of “missing the boat” and being shut off from its users altogether.
On Tuesday OpenAI said a new multi-year agreement will allow it to use Dotdash Meredith’s content to train its large language models and display excerpts and summaries directly in responses to ChatGPT user queries. The pair will also collaborate to create new AI products and features for Dotdash’s audience.
Open AI announced a similar deal with The Financial Times last week, adding to licensing arrangements it already had in place with Axel Springer, Le Monde, Prisa Media, and The Associated Press. (See our database tracking publishers’ relationships with generative AI companies for more information.)
In combination, OpenAI’s deals with publishers allow it to ingest content from over 50 individual publications including The Financial Times, Business Insider, Politico, People, Better Homes & Gardens, Verywell, InStyle, Investopedia, and European publications Bild, Welt, Le Monde, El País, Cinco Días, As and El Huffpost.
The exact terms of those agreements are unclear, but they appear to be relatively standardized from one publisher to the next. Based on the (limited) information disclosed by the companies so far, each deal will allow OpenAI to:
- Use publishers’ content to train its large language models.
- Include publishers’ content in ChatGPT’s responses to user queries, including attribution and links to full articles on publishers’ sites.
- Collaborate with publishers to create new products and services oriented around their content.
Publishers have publicly positioned the deals as evidence that OpenAI fairly values access to their content, but it’s becoming increasingly clear that AI tools could significantly disrupt or undermine many publishers’ business models.
Dotdash currently relies heavily on intent-based search queries to drive traffic to its properties, for example, and with AI chatbots promising to answer many users’ queries directly rather than pointing them to third-party websites, their rise could present significant challenges.
“We have not been shy about the fact that AI platforms should pay publishers for their content and that content must be appropriately attributed,” said Neil Vogel, CEO of Dotdash Meredith. “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.”
FT Group CEO John Ridding echoed similar sentiments: “It’s right, of course, that AI platforms pay publishers for the use of their material. OpenAI understands the importance of transparency, attribution, and compensation – all essential for us.”
Publishers remain divided over how to deal with AI companies. While some are striking licensing deals, others have opted to take legal action.
News organizations owned by hedge fund Alden Global Capital, including the New York Daily News, Chicago Tribune, Orlando Sentinel, San Jose Mercury News, and four others, said last week they were suing OpenAI and Microsoft for alleged copyright infringement. The New York Times filed a similar suit against the two companies in December.
Dotdash Meredith’s parent firm IAC was previously seeking to create a coalition designed to help unite publishers form a united front when negotiating copyright protections from AI firms, but that effort never came to fruition. IAC told the U.S. Copyright Office last year that unless the government protects copyrighted material from being used by generative AI, “the creation and publication of high-quality original content will wither and die.”
