OpenAI and TIME have agreed to a multi-year partnership. OpenAI will access TIME's archives, while TIME can use OpenAI's technology.
As part of the deal, OpenAI gains access to TIME's current and historical content from the past 101 years. This will be used to improve products like ChatGPT. In the future, ChatGPT will be able to access TIME content for user queries and display it on Time.com with proper attribution and links to the original source.
For TIME, the partnership offers opportunities to use OpenAI technology to develop new products. TIME can also provide feedback and suggest ways to improve how journalistic content is presented in ChatGPT and other OpenAI products, according to the announcement.
This deal continues OpenAI's strategy of partnering with major media companies. It follows similar agreements with major publishers. It adds to OpenAI's growing list of partnerships with international media groups, including Le Monde, Prisa Media, Axel Springer, Associated Press, and News Corp brands such as The Wall Street Journal and The Times.
While OpenAI's partnerships with publishers promote journalism through license payments and proper contracts, the company's selection criteria lack transparency. If OpenAI's AI strategy succeeds, it may struggle to provide a fair solution for the entire publishing market, which could severely damage media diversity.
At least OpenAI is more transparent than companies like Google or Perplexity, which either paraphrase publishers' content without payment or proper attribution, or try to bypass publishers' content through other sources like Reddit, sometimes with embarrassing results.
