New York Times and Amazon Sign AI Licensing Deal

The New York Times Co. has agreed to license its editorial staff to Amazon for use in the online giant’s artificial intelligence systems, the business announced on Thursday.

Summary:

1. The multiyear deal includes content from NYT Cooking and The Athletic, the Times’ food and recipe website.

2. The rise of AI technology has forced news businesses to compete with other news organizations, such as Axel Springer, Condé Nast, and News Corp. Amazon, like Google, Microsoft, and Meta, has not been as advanced in AI development as OpenAI and Microsoft.

3. Amazon’s use of editorial content from the Times may extend to the Alexa software on its smart devices.

The multiyear arrangement “will bring Times editorial content to a variety of Amazon customer experiences,” the news organisation said in a statement. Aside from news pieces, the AI deal includes content from NYT Cooking, the Times’ food and recipe website, and The Athletic, which focuses on sports. 

According to this latest tech news, this is the Times’ first licensing agreement, with an emphasis on generative AI technologies.

The Times accused OpenAI and Microsoft of copyright infringement in 2023, claiming that the tech firms had used millions of Times stories to train automated chatbots without paying them.

OpenAI and Microsoft have denied the allegations.

The financial parameters of the licensing agreement with Amazon were not disclosed.

AI Deal of the New York Times

“The AI deal is consistent with our long-held principle that high-quality journalism is worth the price,” the Times’ CEO, Meredith Kopit Levien, wrote in a note to employees. “It aligns with our deliberate approach to ensuring that our work is appreciated appropriately, whether through commercial deals or the enforcement of our intellectual property rights.”

Amazon’s use of editorial content from the Times may extend to the Alexa software on its smart devices. Excerpts from Times reporting may include attribution and a link to the Times’ website. Content from the Times will also be utilised to train Amazon’s proprietary AI models, the company said.

Amazon declined to comment on the Times’ statement.

News businesses have had to deal with the rapid rise of AI technology, components of which have been produced by software programs that consume the content of millions of online news stories.

Even as the Times sued OpenAI, other news organizations, such as Axel Springer, Condé Nast, and News Corp, entered licensing deals to obtain cash for the use of their materials. The Washington Post, controlled by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, signed a deal with OpenAI last month.

Amazon has been doing some catch-up in the AI race.

According to this latest tech news, when OpenAI disclosed ChatGPT in late 2022, bringing off the AI boom, Amazon was taken off guard, as were Google, Meta, and Apple.

Chatbots like ChatGPT are powered by neural networks, which are mathematical systems that can acquire skills by evaluating large volumes of digital data. By identifying patterns in massive amounts of Wikipedia articles, news stories, and chat logs, these systems can learn to write humanlike content on their own, such as poems, term papers, and computer programmes.

Amazon, like Google, Microsoft, and Meta, had the necessary processing capacity to complete the operation.

As the world’s largest cloud computing corporation, it managed a massive network of data centres containing the specialised computer chips needed to train AI systems. However, it lacked some of the skills required to construct the most advanced systems, and the company did not prioritise technology to the same extent as OpenAI and its partner, Microsoft.

Last June, Amazon signed a deal with Adept, a key AI startup, bringing on several of its workers, including its founder, David Luan. According to this latest tech news, Amazon paid Adept at least $330 million to license its technology, according to three people familiar with the transaction.