Financial Times Cuts Content Licensing Deal with OpenAI

Posted on April 29, 2024

The Financial Times has announced it has a cut a licensing deal with OpenAI that will allow the company to train its AI models on FT's archives. OpenAI's ChatGPT will also be able to make short summaries of FT articles as part of the deal.

FT chief executive John Ridding says in the announcement, "Apart from the benefits to the FT, there are broader implications for the industry. It’s right, of course, that AI platforms pay publishers for the use of their material. OpenAI understands the importance of transparency, attribution, and compensation – all essential for us. At the same time, it’s clearly in the interests of users that these products contain reliable sources."

AI models are a complex issue for publishers. The advanced AIs can create content but they need to be fed. The publishers have the content the AIs need to eat but the publishers need to be paid for these robots roaming the Internet devouring content they can regurgitate later. Publishers also have fears that AIs may be able to generate content without them in the future.

Brad Lightcap, COO of OpenAI, says, "Our partnership and ongoing dialogue with the FT is about finding creative and productive ways for AI to empower news organisations and journalists, and enrich the ChatGPT experience with real-time, world-class journalism for millions of people around the world."

The FT OpenAI deal is currently being discussed on Techmeme.

The Financial Times itself reports on AI. In this video they say generative AI's biggest challenge could be making money. So far we know they can spend money...