NYT and Amazon Team Up for AI Content

So, get this: The New York Times and Amazon have totally teamed up. Like, the NYT is letting Amazon use their articles and stuff for things like Alexa. This is, like, the first time the Times has done a licensing deal specifically for generative AI. Pretty wild, right?

The deal is for a few years, and Amazon gets to use articles from the Times, plus stuff from NYT Cooking and The Athletic. They didn't say how much money is involved, though. The Times basically said Amazon can show little bits and summaries of their content in Amazon products, but also use it to train their AI stuff.

This whole thing is happening because AI companies are kinda struggling to make their AI models even better. They've basically used up all the easy data out there. Plus, a bunch of them, including the company behind ChatGPT, are getting sued because people are saying they used data without permission. Remember when the Times sued Microsoft and OpenAI for using their articles to train chatbots? Yeah, that cost the Times like $4.4 million just in legal fees early on. Ouch.

OpenAI, the company Sam Altman leads, said they were looking to partner up to get more data for training their AI. And they have been! They've already made deals with places like the Financial Times, Business Insider, Le Monde, Prisa Media, and Time magazine. Reuters even licensed their articles to Meta Platforms too. Seems like everyone is getting in on the AI data game.

An analyst named Max Willens thinks this deal with Amazon is a good thing because it could help the Times get their stuff in front of people who don't subscribe yet. Kinda makes sense. The Times has been doing pretty well lately anyway. They won four Pulitzer Prizes recently and got more digital subscribers than they thought they would last quarter. Maybe all their bundled offers and, well, all the crazy news happening, are helping people sign up.