OpenAI and Axel Springer strike unprecedented deal to offer news in ChatGPT

Key Points

• Unprecedented Deal Between OpenAI and Axel Springer: OpenAI has entered into an unprecedented deal with Axel Springer, a global news publisher, allowing ChatGPT to summarize news stories from prominent outlets like Politico, Business Insider, Bild, and Welt.
• Legal Challenges in the AI Industry: The announcement comes at a time when legal challenges are emerging in the AI industry, with publishers, artists, writers, and technologists pursuing legal action against AI companies for alleged use of their content or creations as training data. Notable authors, including John Grisham and George R.R. Martin, sued OpenAI in September over alleged copyright infringement.
• Enhancements to ChatGPT’s Capabilities: With the OpenAI-Axel Springer deal, ChatGPT will provide users with news article summaries when queried. The summaries will include content from outlets like Bild and Welt that may be restricted to subscribers, demonstrating a move towards more transparent usage with “attribution and links to the full articles.” This partnership follows OpenAI’s previous deal with the Associated Press in July, where the AP’s news archive was licensed for training data. The collaboration involves Axel Springer providing content from its media brands to train OpenAI’s large language models, such as GPT-4, with the aim of improving ChatGPT’s capabilities. The News Media Alliance’s research, released in October, emphasized the substantial reliance on publisher content in training popular AI models, surpassing generic web content by a significant factor.