The Atlantic and Vox Media are the latest publishers to sign deals with OpenAI allowing its editorial products to be used with its artificial intelligence products. The agreements allow OpenAI to use content from The Atlantic and Vox (owner of The Verge and New York Magazine) to train AI models and display news within ChatGPT. Financial details were not disclosed. The publishers said the deals will expose their content to a broader audience as well as provide access to OpenAI technology to help create new products for readers.

For example, The Atlantic “is developing an initiative dubbed Atlantic Labs, which will focus on AI-powered products using technology from OpenAI and other companies,” according to Bloomberg.

In addition, OpenAI is planning to implement some media tools of its own, notably Media Manager, “which will allow creators to choose which of their works — if any — they will allow to be scraped and trained on for the company’s AI models” when it is released in 2025, reports VentureBeat.

A blog post by OpenAI describes Media Manager as a tool that will allow content purveyors to encode websites with detailed instructions for scraping (or not).

These latest agreements join a string of OpenAI media pacts with organizations including Reuters, Associated Press, The Wall Street Journal publisher News Corporation, Financial Times, and Dotdash Meredith, whose portfolio includes People Magazine and financial website Investopedia. Axel Springer, whose brands include Politico and Business Insider, made a similar deal.

OpenAI “is paying dozens of news organizations for access to their fresh content, sparking a debate in publishing,” writes The Washington Post, alluding to tension between outlets that view the agreements as forward-looking and others who feel AI is poised to upend media norms (including through deepfakes) and displace jobs.

The Atlantic issued a news release in which its CEO Nicholas Thompson said “searching with AI models will be one of the fundamental ways that people navigate the web in the future.”

The outlet also provided a platform for opposing views, including in an article that calls the deals “a devil’s bargain” and says “generative AI has not exactly felt like a friend to the news industry, given that it is trained on loads of material without permission.” Another essay calls the AI deals “a huge mistake,” urging publishers to “be patient and refrain from licensing away their content for relative pennies.”

In a post on LinkedIn, Thompson emphasizes structuring deals correctly, suggesting room for future upside as a way to “hedge our bets.”

Related:
AI Content Deals Face Antitrust Spotlight, Top U.S. Official Says, Bloomberg, 5/30/24