OpenAI continues to strike exclusive deals with select publishers while politicians watch from the sidelines.
OpenAI and News Corp announced a long-term global partnership that will give OpenAI access to current and archived content from News Corp's top news outlets, including The Wall Street Journal, New York Post, The Times, and The Australian.
OpenAI can use this content to answer user questions and improve its products, with the goal of helping people make informed decisions based on trusted information and news sources, the company said. The deal does not include content from other News Corp businesses.
News Corp will also provide journalistic expertise to ensure the "highest journalistic standards" in OpenAI's offerings. News Corp CEO Robert Thomson and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman hailed the partnership as a milestone for journalism and technology, with Altman highlighting the value of News Corp's leadership in global news.
Policymakers sleep on the chatbot economy
A recently leaked pitch deck for OpenAI's Preferred Publisher Program reveals the startup's confidence in deciding what counts as quality journalism, though the criteria OpenAI uses to select publishers is not transparent. Media outlets such as the Associated Press, Axel Springer, Financial Times, Le Monde, and Dotdash Meredith have already joined the program.
If OpenAI is successful with its content economy built around AI assistants and chatbots, or products like SearchGPT, these deals would mean that certain media would get priority treatment from the platform - and the more relevant the platform becomes, the more power it will have over publishers.
Smaller, independent publishers not selected as "preferred" by OpenAI are disadvantaged in this scenario, left with crumbs or the choice of giving away their content to be visible at all - a classic prisoner's dilemma that endangers media diversity.
OpenAI skillfully exploits the fragile economics of the news business, fueled by inadequate products like Google's "AI Overviews" that panic some publishers, which plays into OpenAI's hands. Almost all publishers are heavily dependent on Google traffic.
If OpenAI's gamble pays off, it will have an even greater impact on the global media landscape in the future than Google has had over the past decade or more. This development is clearly on the horizon, but politicians are sleeping through it.
