The New York Times and Amazon Team Up for AI Content
Okay, so get this: The New York Times, you know, the big newspaper folks, they're now letting Amazon use their stories for stuff like Alexa. Yeah, it's a pretty big deal, like, the first time they've done a licensing thing just for AI. The agreement is for a few years, and it means Amazon can use news bits from The Times, plus content from their cooking site, NYT Cooking, and that sports site, The Athletic. They didn't say how much money is changing hands though.
They basically said Amazon can show quick summaries and little pieces of Times stuff in their products, like Alexa. Also, they can use it to train Amazon's own fancy AI models. Weird, right?
This is happening because AI companies are kinda running out of easy information to make their big language models better. Like, they've used up almost everything out there! And a bunch of them, including the company behind ChatGPT, are even getting sued because people are saying they used their data without asking. It's a whole mess. The Times actually sued Microsoft and OpenAI not too long ago, saying they used millions of their articles without permission to teach their chatbots.
Speaking of, The Times even spent about 4.4 million bucks on legal stuff related to that lawsuit in just the first few months of the year. Phew. OpenAI said they were looking to team up with people to get more data for training their AI, and they've already made deals with places like the Financial Times, Business Insider's parent company, and even Time magazine. Reuters also made a deal to let Meta Platforms use their articles.
An analyst guy, Max Willens, thinks this deal with Amazon is a good chance for The Times to get noticed by people who don't subscribe yet. That sounds smart tbh. The Times has been doing pretty well lately too, winning a bunch of Pulitzer Prizes and getting more online subscribers than they thought they would. Their different bundles and all the news happening have really helped get more people reading. What do you think about all these news outlets making deals with AI companies?
