The New York Times recently announced a multi-year AI licensing agreement with Amazon that will integrate its editorial content into various Amazon customer experiences. Under this partnership, Amazon will incorporate summaries and brief excerpts from The Times’ articles into products like Alexa, and will also utilize Times articles to enhance its AI model training.
This agreement follows a lawsuit filed by The Times against Microsoft and OpenAI more than a year ago, in which they claimed the companies were infringing on copyright by “copying and using millions” of their articles to train AI models, ultimately diminishing the publication’s subscription, licensing, advertising, and affiliate revenue. Other media organizations, including The Intercept, Raw Story, CBC/Radio-Canada, and the owner of IGN and CNET, have filed similar lawsuits against OpenAI. Meanwhile, publishers like The Atlantic, News Corp, and Vox Media, the parent company of The Verge, have entered into AI licensing agreements.
“This deal reflects our long-standing belief that high-quality journalism deserves compensation,” stated Meredith Kopit Levien, CEO of The New York Times Company, in a message to the Times staff. “It aligns with our strategic approach to ensuring that our work is properly valued, whether through commercial partnerships or by asserting our intellectual property rights.”
