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New York Times Partners with Amazon to Power AI with Editorial Content

By  |  May 29, 2025

Amazon has secured a multi-year agreement with The New York Times, granting the tech giant access to the publisher’s editorial content for use in its artificial intelligence platforms, including Alexa. This marks the first time the esteemed news outlet has entered into a licensing deal specifically tailored to generative AI, according to Reuters.

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    As part of the arrangement, Amazon will be allowed to use not only news articles but also content from NYT Cooking and The Athletic, a sports publication owned by the Times. The deal enables Amazon to display real-time summaries and excerpts from Times content through its products and services, as well as use the materials to train its proprietary foundation models, per Reuters. Financial details of the agreement have not been disclosed.

    This partnership comes amid increasing challenges faced by AI developers in sourcing high-quality training data. With much of the internet’s freely available information already harvested, companies are turning to premium publishers to feed the next generation of large-language models. Amazon’s collaboration with the Times reflects a growing trend of formal content licensing, as legal scrutiny around data usage intensifies across the tech industry.

    Read more: Amazon Challenges France’s Book Delivery Fee at EU Court

    In 2023, The New York Times filed a high-profile lawsuit against Microsoft and OpenAI, accusing both companies of using millions of its articles without authorization to train AI chatbots. The lawsuit led to $4.4 million in pretax litigation costs for the Times in the first quarter of that year. According to Reuters, OpenAI has since made strides to avoid further legal entanglements by forging agreements with various media organizations, including the Financial Times, Axel Springer, Le Monde, Prisa Media, and Time magazine.

    Meta also joined the wave of licensing activity earlier in 2024, entering into a content agreement with Reuters.

    Analysts view the deal with Amazon as a strategic move for the Times to expand its reach. EMARKETERs Max Willens noted that it presents a valuable chance for the publisher to engage potential subscribers who may not otherwise interact with its content.

    The Times continues to build momentum in the digital space, recently securing four Pulitzer Prizes and surpassing expectations in digital subscription growth during the first quarter.

    Source: Reuters