NYT and Amazon Team Up on AI - What's the Deal?
So, guess what? The New York Times and Amazon are teaming up! The Times is letting Amazon use their articles for cool AI stuff, like maybe for Alexa. This is a pretty big deal 'cause it's the first time the Times has done a deal like this for generative AI.
This whole thing is for a few years. Amazon gets to use the news from The Times, plus stuff from NYT Cooking and The Athletic sports site. They didn't say how much money is involved, though. The Times said that this means Amazon can show quick summaries and parts of Times stories on their products, and also use the info to make their AI models better.
Lots of AI companies are finding it hard to make their AI smarter now that they've used up all the easy info out there. Many, like the guys who made ChatGPT, OpenAI, are also getting sued because people think they used data without permission. You know, The Times even sued Microsoft and OpenAI last year, saying they used millions of their articles without asking to train their chatbots. The Times actually spent a bunch of money, like over a million dollars, just on legal costs for that lawsuit in the first few months of the year.
OpenAI had said they were trying to find partners so they could get more data to train their AI. Since then, theyâve made deals with other news places like the Financial Times, Business Insider's owner, a French paper called Le Monde, a Spanish one called Prisa Media, and even Time magazine. Reuters, another news company, also let Meta Platforms use their articles for their AI chatbot not too long ago.
An analyst named Max Willens thinks this deal with Amazon is cool because it could help the Times reach people who don't already subscribe. The Times actually won some big awards recently, Pulitzer Prizes, and got more online subscribers than they thought they would earlier this year. This was probably because they have good package deals and there's just been a lot going on in the news making people want to read more.
