New York Times partners with Amazon for first AI licensing deal
FILE PHOTO: Pedestrians walk by the New York Times building in Manhattan, New York, U.S., December 8, 2022. REUTERS/Jeenah Moon/File Photo
The New York Times is allowing Amazon.com to use its editorial content for artificial intelligence products such as Alexa, marking the publisher's first licensing deal tied to generative AI.
The multi-year agreement lets Amazon use news articles from The Times and content from NYT Cooking and sports website The Athletic, the publisher said on Thursday, without disclosing the financial terms of the deal.
"This will include real-time display of summaries and short excerpts of Times content within Amazon products and services, such as Alexa, and training Amazon's proprietary foundation models," NYT said.
The deal comes as AI companies strive to overcome difficulties in improving their large-language models after exhausting all the easily accessible data in the world. Many, including ChatGPT-owner OpenAI, are also facing lawsuits related to data usage.
In 2023, The Times sued Microsoft and OpenAI for copyright infringement, accusing them of using millions of the newspaper's articles without permission to help train chatbots to provide information to readers.
NYT recorded $4.4 million in pretax litigation costs in its first quarter related to the copyright lawsuit.
Sam Altman-led OpenAI in 2023 said it was looking to partner up for access to public and private datasets for training artificial AI models. It has since signed agreements with the Financial Times, Business Insider-owner Axel Springer, France's Le Monde, Spain's Prisa Media and Time magazine.
Reuters licensed its articles to Meta Platforms in 2024.
NYT's deal with Amazon "creates a valuable opportunity to market the Times to people who do not yet subscribe", Emarketer analyst Max Willens said.
The publisher recently won four Pulitzer Prizes and added more digital subscribers than expected for the first quarter, boosted by its bundled offerings and a busy news cycle driving more readership.
