OpenAI Forges Licensing Deal With Politico Owner

OpenAI partnered with media company Axel Springer, owner of publications like Politico.

The collaboration is being billed as a first-of-its-kind deal that will provide summaries of Axel Springer content from Politico, Business Insider and Bild in reply to queries asked of OpenAI’s artificial intelligence tool ChatGPT, according to a Wednesday (Dec, 13) announcement.

“The initiative will enrich users’ experience with ChatGPT by adding recent and authoritative content on a wide variety of topics and explicitly values the publisher’s role in contributing to OpenAI’s products,” OpenAI said in its announcement. “… ChatGPT’s answers to user queries will include attribution and links to the full articles for transparency and further information.”

The partnership bolsters Axel Springer’s AI-driven ventures that build upon OpenAI’s technology, using content from Axel Springer media brands to advance the training of OpenAI’s generative AI, per the announcement.

“This partnership with Axel Springer will help provide people with new ways to access quality, real-time news content through our AI tools,” said OpenAI Chief Operating Officer Brad Lightcap in the announcement. “We are deeply committed to working with publishers and creators around the world and ensuring they benefit from advanced AI technology and new revenue models.”

The collaboration comes five months after the Associated Press (AP) announced its own deal with OpenAI, letting OpenAI license part of the newswire’s archive, while the AP will leverage the AI company’s technology and product expertise.

“We are pleased that OpenAI recognizes that fact-based, nonpartisan news content is essential to this evolving technology, and that they respect the value of our intellectual property,” AP Senior Vice President and Chief Revenue Officer Kristin Heitmann said at the time.

Other news organizations have expressed unease about the use of AI on their copyrighted materials. In an August letter signed by industry bodies such as the News/Media Alliance and the European Publishers Council, media companies called for a framework that lets them “collectively negotiate” with AI model operators over the use of their intellectual property.

“Generative AI and large language models … disseminate that content and information to their users, often without any consideration of, remuneration to, or attribution to the original creators,” the letter read. “Such practices undermine the media industry’s core business models.”

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