OpenAI Strikes ChatGPT Content Deal with Axel Springer, Publisher of Politico, Insider, and BILD
Generative AI assistants are set to become the new information hubs
News publisher Axel Springer and OpenAI announced a content and technology partnership today that will bring information from Politico, Insider, BILD, WELT, eMarketer, Rolling Stone, and other publications to ChatGPT users. This includes articles normally behind a publisher paywall. The joint announcement from Axel Springer and OpenAI stated:
Axel Springer and OpenAI have announced a global partnership to strengthen independent journalism in the age of artificial intelligence (AI). 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. This marks a significant step in both companies’ commitment to leverage AI for enhancing content experiences and creating new financial opportunities that support a sustainable future for journalism.
With this partnership, ChatGPT users around the world will receive summaries of selected global news content from Axel Springer’s media brands including POLITICO, BUSINESS INSIDER, and European properties BILD and WELT, including otherwise paid content. ChatGPT’s answers to user queries will include attribution and links to the full articles for transparency and further information.
In addition, the partnership supports Axel Springer’s existing AI-driven ventures that build upon OpenAI’s technology. The collaboration also involves the use of quality content from Axel Springer media brands for advancing the training of OpenAI’s sophisticated large language models.
Data Partnership
OpenAI recently announced a new data partnerships program where it was working “together with organizations to produce public and private datasets for training AI models.” That is clearly one benefit of the agreement. The news follows an earlier agreement between OpenAI and Associated Press. That deal offered OpenAI access to 3.65 million text articles, 60 million images, and 21,500 hours of live video.
Axel Springer has a lot of curated content that will prove valuable as OpenAI trains future generative AI foundation models. However, another benefit is the distribution of news and information through ChatGPT. This will add value to users which will be another reason to choose ChatGPT over rival solutions. For Axel Springer, this deal provides them with visibility to users of a large business and consumer platform.
Revenue Partnership
It also provides a new revenue source. The press release was vague about the terms of the deal. “This marks a significant step in both companies’ commitment to leverage AI for enhancing content experiences and creating new financial opportunities that support a sustainable future for journalism.” There is apparently a revenue-sharing agreement between the companies.
Adding Value
ChatGPT performs a lot of tasks for users related to text generation, image generation, and text analysis. Access to real-time information is a newer feature critical to OpenAI’s strategy. Note that the company said it had 100 million weekly active users during the DevDay event in November. A key company strategy is to turn the several hundred million occasional users and 100 million weekly users into daily users. That will ensure ChatGPT is a stickier product with more user loyalty.
Access to news and lifestyle content is one way to integrate ChatGPT more tightly into the users’ daily lives. You should expect to see more of these arrangements very soon, especially considering that OpenAI appears to be offering to share revenue. The news industry can use another source of revenue about now.
In addition, you can bet that OpenAI wants Axel Springer to use its technology in newsrooms. Axel Springer’s CEO said earlier this year he expects AI will be used to improve operational efficiency and eliminate some jobs. You could imagine the agreement provides some revenue sharing and access to OpenAI technology in exchange for access to the data for inference and training. Win. Win.
