OpenAI signs multi-year content partnership with Condé Nast
Condé Nast and OpenAI announced a multi-year partnership on Tuesday to display content from the publisher’s brands such as the Vogue, Wired and the New Yorker within the AI startup’s products, including ChatGPT and its SearchGPT prototype.
The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. The Microsoft-backed, Sam Altman-led firm has signed similar deals with Time magazine, the Financial Times, Business Insider owner Axel Springer, France’s Le Monde and Spain’s Prisa Media over the past few months. The deals give OpenAI access to the large archives of text owned by the publishers, which are necessary both for training large language models like ChatGPT and for finding real-time information.
OpenAI launched its AI-powered search engine SearchGPT in July, with real-time access to information from the internet, making an incursion on territory long dominated by Google. The deal with the magazine publisher gives the search engine permission to return information and quotes from Condé articles in its results.
Brad Lightcap, chief operating officer at OpenAI, said the company is committed to working with Condé Nast and other news publishers to “ensure that as AI plays a larger role in news discovery and delivery, it maintains accuracy, integrity and respect for quality reporting”.
In an email reported by the New York Times, Condé Nast’s CEO, Roger Lynch, said that the deal will make up for some of the revenue that technology companies have snagged publishers in recent years. He wrote: “Generative AI is rapidly changing ways audiences are discovering information. It’s crucial that we meet audiences where they are an embrace new technologies while also ensuring proper attribution and compensation for use of our intellectual property.”
Other media companies have taken the opposite tack. The New York Times and the Intercept have sued OpenAI for using their articles. The litigation is ongoing.