In the past few months, news organizations have jumped into bed with OpenAI, making Faustian deals where the cash-strapped media industry exchanges a pittance for the right to hack and integrate OpenAI’s content into things like ChatGPT. Includes blood signers News Corp (ed The Wall Street Journal), the Financial Times, nation Journal publisher Dotdash Meredith, APand now Atlantic and Vox Media.
Atlantic and Vox Media quickly confirmed these new deals Axios first published the news.
Atlantic he says OpenAI will be a “premium news source” and all citations will be clearly attributed to it Atlantic with links to original content. There are concerns from publishers that users of AI chatbots don’t actually need to refer to original sources; perhaps the calculation is that for an industry in the twilight of its life, some of them inbound link traffic is better at least. Then again, perhaps by agreeing to get away with it altogether Atlantic effectively heading straight for the tarp of its own (and the media’s as a whole) destruction. Also, an experimental “microsite” called Atlantic Labs will showcase “new products and features to better serve its journalism and readers.”
Vox Media (publisher of the flagship news site Vox, technology site The Verge, a network of sports blogs under SB Nation banner and more) He says he will linking to a similar attribute style and its content.
Vox Media will also use OpenAI data in both internal and public content. Specifically, it will “augment” Vox’s tool, The Strategist Gift Scout, which helps visitors find things to buy (and helps Vox Media generate affiliate revenue). It will also be included in the publisher’s internal advertising platform, so expect better ads at tracking you around the web and learning what you want to buy.
There’s no indication yet that either company will publish anything directly AI-generated, such as sites CNET and Sports Illustrated they tried with disastrous results, though neither company said anything about keeping AI out of their content. Already Atlanticit’s likely that such experiments will be housed in the new Atlantic Labs unit, at least for starters.
While a number of publishers have been quick to jump on board with AI, not everyone is so enthusiastic. The New York Times sued both OpenAI and Microsoft in December for copyright infringement, saying both companies were using their material to train their models without permission. Eight publications recently owned by Alden Capital Group, incl Chicago Tribune and New York Daily News, sued both companies with a similar complaint. At this point, it seems like it’s either a case of spending time and money in court pursuing OpenAI’s rampant intellectual theft, or cutting a deal that will cash in on a terrible media market.
It was alone last week Atlantic posted a screenshot of himself criticizing media organizations for taking a pittance in exchange for something of significantly greater value than AI intruders. Unfortunately, the odds are that this story (and my moral high) will age just as poorly for the foreseeable future.
Update, May 29, 2024, 12:20 PM ET: This story has been updated to include details of Vox Media’s official statement about the deal.
