After nearly two years of legal disputes, The New York Times has finally reached a new agreement with Amazon, allowing the latter to use its editorial content to train its artificial intelligence platform. This agreement marks the first time that The New York Times has licensed its content to a tech giant to support the development of generative artificial intelligence.
Image source note: Image generated by AI, image authorization service provider Midjourney
According to The New York Times' statement, this agreement includes not only news articles but also recipes and food-related content from NYT Cooking website, as well as materials from The Athletic sports website. This means that Amazon will be able to integrate The New York Times' high-quality content into its various customer experiences, enriching user experience.
Moreover, Amazon also revealed that these authorized contents may be extended to its Alexa software for smart speakers, further enhancing the capabilities and knowledge base of intelligent assistants. This move will allow users to receive more comprehensive and diverse information services when interacting with Alexa.
Although the specific terms of this deal have not been disclosed, this is Amazon's first agreement of this kind with a publishing institution. In this regard, OpenAI has already signed similar licensing agreements with several media companies, including The Washington Post, The Atlantic, The Guardian, News Corp, and Axel Springer, among others. The New York Times' move also indicates that it is gradually shifting towards cooperation rather than confrontation in handling copyright issues related to artificial intelligence.
Previously, The New York Times had accused OpenAI and Microsoft of using millions of its published articles without authorization to train artificial intelligence models, claiming that such actions infringed on its copyrights. However, OpenAI and Microsoft both denied these accusations, stating that their practices were legal.
Through its collaboration with Amazon, The New York Times is not only seeking new solutions to protect its own copyrights but also exploring how to cooperate with tech companies to address the challenges and opportunities brought about by the age of artificial intelligence. This change may trigger more collaborations between media and tech companies in the future.
Key points:
📄 The New York Times reaches an agreement with Amazon to authorize the use of its editorial content for AI training.
📊 The agreement includes news articles and materials from NYT Cooking and The Athletic.
🤖 This marks The New York Times' first content authorization focused on generative artificial intelligence.