New York Times and Amazon AI Deal
So get this, the New York Times and Amazon basically made a deal. The Times is letting Amazon use their stories and stuff for things like Alexa. Itâs kinda the first time theyâve done a deal specifically about this AI stuff.
The agreement is for a few years, we don't know how much cash is changing hands though. But yeah, Amazon can use articles from the main paper, plus stuff from NYT Cooking and even The Athletic, which is their sports site. The Times said this means Amazon products, like Alexa, can show little bits or summaries of their content. It also helps Amazon train its AI models.
This deal is happening because AI companies are trying really hard to make their large language models better. Apparently, they've used up all the easy information out there. Plus, a bunch of them, like the company that made ChatGPT, are getting sued because people are saying they used data without permission. In fact, The Times actually sued Microsoft and OpenAI last year, saying they just took millions of their articles to train those chatbots without asking. The Times even had to pay like $4.4 million in legal fees in the first few months of this year because of that lawsuit.
OpenAI said last year they wanted to find partners to get access to different kinds of data to train their AI. Since then, they've made deals with places like the Financial Times, Business Insider's owner Axel Springer, a couple of places in Europe called Le Monde and Prisa Media, and even Time magazine. Reuters also let Meta Platforms use their articles for their AI chatbot not too long ago.
Some analyst named Max Willens said that this deal between The Times and Amazon is a good chance to get the Times in front of people who don't subscribe yet. The Times has been doing pretty well lately too, they just won four Pulitzer Prizes and got more digital subscribers than they thought they would at the start of the year. I guess their bundles and all the news happening are helping people sign up and read more.
