OpenAI CEO Sam Altman speaks at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Jan. 18, 2024.
Stefan Wermuth | Bloomberg | Getty Images
OpenAI on Tuesday announced a partnership with Condé Nast, in which the Microsoft-backed artificial intelligence company’s 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 reliable content sources faster and more intuitive,” OpenAI wrote in a blog post. “We’re combining our conversational models with information from the web to give you fast and timely answers with clear and relevant sources.”
OpenAI added that the SearchGPT prototype offers direct links to news stories and that the company plans “to integrate the best of these features directly into ChatGPT in the future.”
It’s the latest in a recent trend of some media outlets joining forces with AI startups like OpenAI to enter into content deals.
In July, Perplexity AI debuted a revenue-sharing model for publishers following more than a month of plagiarism accusations. 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 “Publishers Program.”
OpenAI and Time magazine announced a “multi-year content deal” in June that will allow OpenAI to access current and archived articles from more than 100 years of Time’s history. OpenAI will be able to display Time’s content within its ChatGPT chatbot in response to user questions, according to a press release, and to use Time’s content “to enhance its products,” or, 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 will partner with OpenAI, allowing the company to train its AI models on Reddit content.
Other news publications and media outlets are aggressively trying to protect their businesses as AI-generated content becomes more prevalent.
The Center for Investigative Reporting, the country’s oldest nonprofit newsroom, sued OpenAI and lead backer Microsoft in federal court in June for alleged 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 filed a suit against Microsoft and OpenAI, alleging intellectual property violations related to its journalistic content appearing in ChatGPT training data. The Times said it seeks to hold Microsoft and OpenAI accountable for “billions of dollars in statutory and actual damages” related to the “unlawful copying and use of the Times’s uniquely valuable works,” according to a filing in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. OpenAI disagreed with the Times’ characterization of events.
The Chicago Tribune, along with seven other newspapers, followed with a suit in April.
