In a first-of-its-kind AI-focused licensing deal, Amazon will be able to access content from The New York Times for $20 million to $25 million annually, according to The Wall Street Journal. This is a milestone because it’s the first AI-related licensing pact for the Times and Amazon’s first agreement like this with a publisher.
The Amazon-NYT deal was announced in May, but the financial terms were not previously disclosed. Amazon will gain rights to a broad selection of Times content including news, cooking, and sports, which it can use to develop AI applications such as its Alexa voice assistant and other services, the Journal reported.
AI firms increasingly turning to news content for training data
Tech companies have increasingly used content from news organizations to train their AI models, allowing them to generate real-time responses to user queries about current events.
Last year, OpenAI signed a deal with News Corp. — the Journal’s parent company — worth more than $250 million over five years, as well as agreements with Business Insider and Axel Springer, which owns Politico. Those deals are worth an estimated $25 million to $30 million, according to Journal reporting.
The value of news for AI models
As the use of journalism to train AI models expands, concerns over copyright infringement have grown. In fact, the Times has filed a lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft, while two News Corp. subsidiaries are separately suing AI search engine Perplexity. Other copyright infringement lawsuits have been filed by The Intercept, Raw Story, Getty, and AlterNet against OpenAI, Microsoft, Stability AI, and others.
In a 2024 Nieman Reports, journalist and researcher Courtney Radsch observed that many publishers argue OpenAI and similar firms used their stories without consent or compensation.
“As we watch the fight between news organizations and Big Tech and the rules around AI unfold, we should be looking to policymakers to set the rules and ensure a level playing field so that journalism survives and thrives in the transition to AI,’’ Radsch wrote. “This is not only an imperative for the embattled news industry but also for democracy more broadly.”