Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, speaks at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on January 18, 2024.
Stefan Wermuth | Bloomberg | Getty Images
OpenAI on Tuesday announced a partnership with Condé Nast, under which MicrosoftGoogle-powered AI products, like ChatGPT and SearchGPT, will be able to display content from Vogue, The New Yorker, Condé Nast Traveler, GQ, Architectural Digest, Vanity Fair, Wired, Bon Appétit, and other outlets.
“With the introduction of our SearchGPT prototype, we’re testing new search features that make finding information and trusted content sources faster and easier,” OpenAI wrote in a blog post. “We’re combining our conversational models with information from the web to give you fast, timely answers with clear, relevant sources.”
OpenAI added that the SearchGPT prototype provides direct links to news stories and that the company plans to “integrate the best of these features directly into ChatGPT in the future.”
This is the latest in a recent trend of some media outlets partnering with AI startups like OpenAI to enter into content deals.
In July, Perplexity AI rolled out a revenue-sharing model with publishers more than a month after plagiarism allegations. Media outlets and content platforms including Fortune, Time, Entrepreneur, The Texas Tribune, Der Spiegel, and WordPress.com were the first to join the company’s “publisher program.”
OpenAI and Time magazine announced a “multi-year content deal” in June that will give OpenAI access to current and archived articles from more than 100 years of Time’s history. According to a press release, OpenAI will be able to display Time content within its ChatGPT chatbot in response to user questions, and use Time content to “improve its products” or, more likely, to train its AI models.
OpenAI announced a similar partnership in May with News Corp., allowing OpenAI to access current and archived articles from The Wall Street Journal, MarketWatch, Barron’s, the New York Post and other publications. Reddit also announced in May that it would partner with OpenAI, allowing the company to train its AI models on Reddit content.
News publications and other media outlets are aggressively trying to protect their businesses as AI-generated content proliferates.
The Center for Investigative Reporting, the nation’s oldest nonprofit newsroom, sued OpenAI and its main backer Microsoft in federal court in June for copyright infringement, following similar suits from publications including The New York Times, The Chicago Tribune and The New York Daily News.
In December, The New York Times sued Microsoft and OpenAI, alleging intellectual property violations related to its journalistic content that appeared in ChatGPT training data. The Times said it was seeking to hold Microsoft and OpenAI liable for “billions of dollars in statutory and actual damages” related to “the unlawful copying and misappropriation of the uniquely valuable work of The New York Times,” according to a filing in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. OpenAI disagreed with The New York Times’ description of the events.
The Chicago Tribune, along with seven other newspapers, followed suit in April.
